Editing Gulag (section)

=== Formation and expansion during Stalin's rule ===
The Gulag was an administrative body that watched over the camps; eventually, its name would retrospectively be used as a name for these camps. After [[Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin|Lenin's death in 1924]], Stalin was able to take control of the government, and he began to form the gulag system. On June 27, 1929, the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Politburo]] created a system of self-supporting camps that would eventually replace the existing prisons around the country.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Khlevniuk|first1=Oleg|title=The History of the Gulag|date=2004|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|page=9}}</ref> Prisoners who received a prison sentence which exceeded three years were required to remain in these prisons. Prisoners who received a prison sentence which was shorter than three years were required to remain in the prison system that was still under the purview of the [[NKVD]].

The purpose of these new camps was to colonise the remote and inhospitable environments throughout the Soviet Union. These changes took place around the time when Stalin started to institute [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|collectivization]] and rapid industrial development. [[Collectivisation in the Soviet Union|Collectivisation]] resulted in a large-scale [[purge]] of peasants and so-called [[Kulaks]]. In contrast to other Soviet peasants, the Kulaks were supposedly wealthy, and as a result, the state classified them as [[Capitalism|capitalists]], and by extension, it also classified them as [[Enemy of the people#Soviet Union|enemies of socialism]]. The term would also become associated with anyone who opposed or even seemed disssatisfied with the [[Government of the Soviet Union|Soviet government]].

By late 1929, Stalin launched a program which was known as ''[[dekulakization]]''. Stalin demanded the complete elimination of the kulak class, resulting in the imprisonment and execution of Soviet peasants. In just four months, 60,000 people were sent to the camps and 154,000 other people were exiled. However, this was only the beginning of the ''dekulakisation'' process. In 1931 alone, 1,803,392 people were exiled.<ref>{{cite book |last1=khlevniuk|first1=Oleg |title=The History of the Gulag|date=2004|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|page=11}}</ref>

Although these massive relocation processes were successful in transferring a large potential free forced labor work force to places where it was needed, that is about all it was successful in doing. All of the "[[Forced settlements in the Soviet Union|special settlers]]", as the Soviet government referred to them, lived on starvation level rations, and as a result, many people starved to death in the camps, and anyone who was healthy enough to escape tried to do just that. This situation forced the government to give rations to a group of people which it was hardly getting any use out of, and as a result, it was just costing the Soviet government money. The [[Joint State Political Directorate|Unified State Political Administration]] (OGPU) quickly discovered the problem, and in response, it began to reform the ''dekulakisation'' process.<ref name="The History of the Gulag">{{cite book |last1=Khlevniuk|first1=Oleg |title=The History of the Gulag|date=2004|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|page=17}}</ref>

In an attempt to prevent mass escapes from the colony, the OGPU started to recruit prisoners who lived inside it, and it also set up ambushes around popular escape routes. The OGPU also attempted to raise the living conditions in these camps in order to discourage people from actively trying to escape from them, and Kulaks were told that they would regain their rights in five years. Even these revisions ultimately failed to resolve the problem, and as a result, the ''dekulakisation'' process was a failure because it did not lead to the creation of a steady forced labor force for the government. These prisoners were also lucky to be in the gulag in the early 1930s. Prisoners were relatively well off compared to what the prisoners would have to go through in the final years of the gulag.<ref name="The History of the Gulag"/>
The Gulag was officially established on April 25, 1930, as the GULAG by the [[Joint State Political Directorate|OGPU]] order 130/63 in accordance with the [[Council of People's Commissars|Sovnarkom]] order 22 p.&nbsp;248 dated April 7, 1930. It was renamed as the GULAG in November of that year.<ref name="memo" />

The hypothesis that economic considerations were responsible for mass arrests during the period of Stalinism has been refuted on the grounds of former Soviet archives that have become accessible since the 1990s, although some archival sources also tend to support an economic hypothesis.<ref name="Jakobson">See, e.g. Jakobson, Michael. 1993. ''Origins of the GULag: The Soviet Prison Camp System 1917–34''. Lexington, Kentucky: [[University Press of Kentucky]]. p. 88.</ref><ref name="Ivanova">See, e.g. Ivanova, Galina M. 2000. ''Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Totalitarian System''. Armonk, New York: [[M. E. Sharpe]]. ch. 2.</ref> In any case, the development of the camp system followed economic lines. The growth of the camp system coincided with the peak of the Soviet [[industrialisation]] campaign. Most of the camps established to accommodate the masses of incoming prisoners were assigned distinct economic tasks.{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}} These included the exploitation of natural resources and the colonization of remote areas, as well as the realisation of enormous infrastructural facilities and industrial construction projects. The plan to achieve these goals with "[[Forced settlements in the Soviet Union|special settlements]]" instead of labor camps was dropped after the revealing of the [[Nazino affair]] in 1933.

The 1931–32 archives indicate the Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; while in 1935, approximately 800,000 were in camps and 300,000 in colonies.<ref name=Kozlov /> Gulag population reached a peak value (1.5 million) in 1941, gradually decreased during the war and then started to grow again, achieving a maximum by 1953.<ref name="GRZ"/> Besides Gulag camps, a significant amount of prisoners, which confined prisoners serving short sentence terms.<ref name="GRZ"/>
[[File:USSR custodial population in 1934-53.png|thumb|The population of Gulag camps (blue) and Gulag colonies (red) in 1934–53.<ref name="GRZ"/>]]

In the early 1930s, a tightening of the Soviet penal policy caused a significant growth of the prison camp population.<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HYSGZs6mW5wC|title=Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps|last=Applebaum|first=Anne|date=2012-08-02|publisher=Penguin Books Limited|isbn=978-0-14-197526-9|chapter=The Camps Expand}}</ref>

During the [[Great Purge]] of 1937–38, mass arrests caused another increase in inmate numbers. Hundreds of thousands of persons were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms on the grounds of one of the multiple passages of the notorious [[Article 58]] of the Criminal Codes of the Union republics, which defined punishment for various forms of "counterrevolutionary activities". Under [[NKVD Order No. 00447]], tens of thousands of Gulag inmates were executed in 1937–38 for "continuing counterrevolutionary activities".
 
Between 1934 and 1941, the number of prisoners with higher education increased more than eight times, and the number of prisoners with high education increased five times.<ref name="Земсков" /> It resulted in their increased share in the overall composition of the camp prisoners.<ref name="Земсков" /> Among the camp prisoners, the number and share of the intelligentsia was growing at the quickest pace.<ref name="Земсков" /> Distrust, hostility, and even hatred for the intelligentsia was a common characteristic of the Soviet leaders.<ref name="Земсков" /> Information regarding the imprisonment trends and consequences for the intelligentsia derive from the extrapolations of [[Viktor Zemskov]] from a collection of prison camp population movements data.<ref name="Земсков" /><ref>{{cite web|title=Таблица 3. Движение лагерного населения ГУЛАГа|url=http://scepsis.net/library/misc/id-937_table3.html}}</ref>