Gulag - The Story | Part 1: Origins - 1917-1933 | Free Documentary History

foreign [Music] system whose sheer size and Longevity are unusual is a major historical phenomenon of the 20th century these Soviet camps were created in 1918 and reached their Peak during the 1950s around 500 concentration camp-like facilities have locked up in total 20 million people over 40 years innocence made guilty one adult out of six has been in a camp or deported the [Music] good archipelago as it was named by author Alexander sojournitzen used to spread over thousands of kilometers from the White Sea to the Black Sea from Moscow to Vladivostok from the Arctic Circle to Central Asia for decades the Soviet concentration camp system has been hidden concealed ignored denied the gulag was like a country within a country a lost continent an independent civilization difficult to see and to this day still unknown and misunderstood foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in the aftermath of the revolution of October 17 the Orthodox Monastery of the slovkin islands in the white sea is emptied of its monks this holy place has been chosen to experiment the principles of the gulag a locked area far away isolated and with a harsh weather starting in 1923 the slovaki islands become the first concentration camp where political opponents deemed Dangerous by the Bolshevik regime are sent [Music] in June 1923 I disembarked in salofki Andrei rusheen is 18 when he reaches the slovkin islands to serve his sentence [Music] on the boat with me were several political prisoners revolutionary socialists and anarchists there was also a group of clergyman and many common criminals tev the first commander of the camp welcomes the newcomers with these words you can forget all the rights he once had for here we have our own rules Dimitri likachev is arrested when he's 22 because he belonged to an illegal group of students when reaching the salofki islands his group is welcomed by the head of the camp like this it's just here there's no Soviet power hear their salofkist power here the prosecutor never comes no latecomer will be allowed in the Convoy a step to the left or the right will be deemed an attempt to escape this has become the rule the punishments The Watchmen inflict upon the prisoners in this prison are on the edge of sadism at the center of the circle of hell the salofki islands represent lies Mount sakini and on top of it the Church of the Lord's Ascension a place the prisoners call the hill of the ax it is turned into a disciplinary isolation chamber where executions are carried out the victims are attached to a heavyweight and thrown off the top of a 375-step staircase [Music] The Watchmen are usually former criminals and display unrestricted violence women represent about 10 percent of the prisoners but their fate is particularly awful [Music] a world without any rights they are but sexual slaves for the prison guards [Music] as the months go by new inmates keep coming to the salofki islands there were around 200 in 1923 but three years later as the repression against anyone not fitting the Bolshevik model hardens there are almost twenty thousand foreign foreign [Music] started right after Lenin's companions took power in October 1917. the Bolsheviks are a minority in such a huge country and so they begin early on to use violence and coercion to strengthen their domination [Music] shared the repression is based on the conviction that the new regime has the right to remove mercilessly all its opponents called enemies of the people [Music] in order to implement such Terror the Bolshevik government created in December 1917 the checker the Checker which means extraordinary commission is the party's sword and shield and exists and acts beyond the law Lenin places Felix jajinski as the head of the Checker he's 40 years old and has spent 11 years in prison or exiled among all of us Felix has spent the most time in the tsarist prisons he knows his job that was Lenin's comment to justify his choice Felix sajinski has the full support of Lenin and in less than a year he puts together an incredible repressive Machinery above all laws and sometimes even above the party it's a state within the state with its own network of informers special troops and intelligence services in short a political police of more than 200 000 people [Music] following an attack against Lenin on the 30th of August 1918 by an anarchist sejinski sets off the repression the Checker is in charge of implementing the Red Terror foreign [Music] the number of victims of the Red Terror of autumn 1918 is estimated to be between 10 000 and 15 000 people during the summer of 1918 the first concentration camps called conslager are named derived from German are created they are here to protect the Soviet Republic against its so-called enemies the concentration camps are managed by the Checker and gather people that have been arbitrarily arrested because they belong to a category the regime didn't like upper class Nobles social dangerous elements along with these camps targeting political opponents the Bolshevik regime is experimenting with corrective labor camps camps that gather people sentenced by a court usually for ordinary crimes foreign [Music] corrective labor camps were intended to replace jail by re-education through Labor but the border between concentration camp and labor camp remains blurry many camps gather both political opponents locked up without a trial and sentenced criminals in the Autumn of 1921 there are 120 000 prisoners in about 200 camps foreign however the number of opponents and malcontents keeps growing in 1922 the Revolutionary Socialist Party at once brother and rival of the Bolsheviks is eliminated its leaders are pilloried during a spectacular trial and presented as traitors eight of them are sentenced to death but the reactions of the International Community commute the sentence brother ready [Music] clergyman also fall victim to the repression in Spring 1922 the campaign of seizure of everything that belongs to the church leads to the arrest of thousands of priests and monks several major public Trials of clergyman are held in Moscow and petrograd hundreds of them are sentenced to Capital Punishment thousands are deported to camps [Music] choosing a monastery is the location of the testing lab for a Soviet concentration camp-like system is not a random choice foreign [Music] Island to become a model of re-education through Labor [Music] the ogpu the new name of the Checker assigns to the camp an ambitious plan of exploitation of both the forests and peat deposits the new internal rules plan for 12-hour work days one day of rest every 10 days and high rates of felling [Music] Oleg volkov refused to become an Informer of the GPU he was sentenced to just three years in a camp but ended up spending 27 years there a major part of it in slovkin Bush the jail regime was very strict especially in the logging those who hadn't completed that task could be shot that's what happened if you didn't respect the quotas a former prisoner nephtali Frankel becomes head of the economy his motto we must put maximum pressure on a prisoner during their first three months after that they're useless Frankel decides that the food ration will be proportional to the amount of work done this practice will be at the core of the whole Soviet concentration camp system the life and working conditions in solovki become harsher and harsher especially during winter when the temperatures drop your videos later on I saw with my own two eyes people being brought outside in their underwear because everything was frozen they've been locked in an empty hanger yes I myself had to spend the winter in a cell that wasn't heated a Georgian officer who had managed to escape salofky publishes in London in 1926 a book that narrates the atrocious living conditions in the camp the same information is then published in 1927 by a French jurist named Raymond dugre in his book a prison in red Russia solovki the first book in French dealing with the camps in the USSR almost from its birth the gulag is known and denounced in the West [Music] the Soviet government answers in 1928 by ordering from the ogpu a movie about salofki in order to show that this hell is actually heaven a cinema team comes to Moscow to film a nice summer camp cute white tablecloths smoking rooms games of Chess bathing [Music] even some shows with music [Music] [Applause] [Music] the guided tour of solovki of the then popular author Maxim gorki in 1929 also aims at falsifying information and hiding the true horror of the camp [Music] we suspected he had come to solofky for a purpose to write that nothing horrible was happening there in exchange he had been promised that the living conditions of the prisoners would soften period before he arrived every patient in the hospital had been removed and the bed sheets had been replaced by clean ones when he came in the hospital and saw the nurses with their white uniforms he said I'm quoting with absolute precision I don't like theater and he left he didn't visit the patients when he reached Mount sakuni the place where the worst was taking place with the Dungeons and where people were tortured he found a table with newspapers on it the inmates in that cell were supposed to read the newspapers to show that they were being re-educated however they held the newspapers upside down on purpose one of the newspapers back correctly and then left showing that he had understood the message oh despite some reluctance the author ends up writing a long article showing the benefits of slovkin foreign it is through them that the state will quickly reach one of its goals putting an end to prisons [Music] Gorky supports the system and sings the birth of a new man regenerated through Labor [Music] four months after the visit of Maxim Gorky the Camp's leaders order the most extensive Mass execution in the camp up till that point they were shot in the neck there were 300 shots more perhaps I think there was only one bullet per person they couldn't aim well enough to kill with one shot and would just throw the bodies in a pit the day following the executions there were still people moving in the pit 300 inmates are shot without any form of trial with the excuse that they tried to organize a mass Breakout [Music] [Music] Lenin dies in January 1924 after several months of illness Stalin supervises the funeral Stalin had been the General Secretary of the Central Committee since 1922 this allowed him to supervise all promotions and transfers of high-ranking party officials this power was a key element in the battle among the Bolshevik leaders to decide who would take over Lenin's place [Music] in July 1926 during the funeral of jedzinski the founder of the Checker the Bolshevik leaders are all here side by side Stalin and Trotsky yet their Brotherhood is but a facade Stalin is moving in secret to isolate his most dangerous political opponent Trotsky in 1927 weakened he is exiled foreign becomes Lenin's Heir and Carries on his cult he relies on the support of a tight group of followers including Molotov kaganovic or Johnny kidze kirov mikoian vorosilov as soon as the Bolsheviks came to power the dictatorship of the party replaced the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat but now Begins the dictatorship of the general secretary over the party [Music] in 1928 Stalin begins with much funfair the first five years plan whose main goal is to accelerate the country's industrialization the objective of increasing production by 20 every year is unrealistic thus they need to find people guilty of the mistakes and delays [Music] a trial of the industrial party opens in 1930. the accused are engineers and technicians charged with sabotaging production vichinski is the president of the court and leads the process according to a ritual that will become a standard for all stalinian trials the accused have been tortured and confess imaginary crimes party vegetables them is so yeah what's up um the trial is mentioned in all Soviet newspapers and highlights the myth of The Saboteur working for a foreign power a myth that can explain the regime's economic failures [Music] demonstrations asking for punishment take place [Music] foreign five of the accused are sentenced to death three are sent to camps [Applause] [Music] on top of forced industrialization Stalin's economic strategy includes the collectivization of the lands in a country where 80 of the population lives in the countryside the money needed for industrialization can only be found through massive purchase of farming Goods as an extremely low price the purpose of collectivization is to gather Farmers by force into state-owned Farms called colcoses Maria mcleava is deported along with her family when she's eight collectivization began our Villages for botany become a cold Coast and they started to get rid of the most wealthy people [Music] the Soviets decide to expropriate kulaks Farmers that are supposedly wealthy yet often turn out to have a scant income these kulaks are generally against the collectivization of the land [Music] sure and decided to evict them from their lands so as to enable the villagers to build their new lives my family was part of that category is [Music] brigades requisition the harvests and Cattle [Music] they moved from house to house and took everything up to the last seed and they did the same for us they took everything forced our family to certain starvation kulaks are used as scapegoats foreign [Music] [Music] within a very short time tens of millions of farmers are forced to leave their lands I remember it it was a beautiful sunny day a man wearing bloomers and carrying a book or a newspaper came to our home and told us to get ready to leave my mother asked where to deportation my mother started to scream at my sister to cry and I grabbed the Shelf with my dolls I was six years old foreign [Music] they didn't even tell my mother where they took her they just took her without even giving her time to change her clothes she told me I was sitting next to the stove and they took me dressed like that she didn't take anything with her and they brought her to kulai it was in March and they threw her in the snow in the middle of the forest foreign [Music] my parents were very sad to see all the convoys with entire families on board going away while keeping their dead one day my mother and her friend had just milked the cows and decided to go to the road with a pot of milk to give some to those who still had young children then someone threw her a package and said pretend it's yours easiest and then she didn't know what was in the package once home my mother opened the package and discovered a dead baby his mother had probably given birth during transfer and wrapped the baby in a rag in the hope of giving it to someone to save it the Bolshevik regime tries to convince farmers of the benefits of collectivization thank you so my father found a spot where he could stood on his tractor and gave a speech he said that our lives would change that there would be more equipment every year if you said that physical labor would decrease there would be more machines and we'd control them that the roads would be asphalted there would be electricity in the village houses would be built in bricks there would be new schools a hospital people were really happy [Music] after Labor by hand comes the time of the machines and of beautiful modern Innovation these tractors filmed by eisenstein pave the way towards the socialism of the 20th century [Music] though chaos in the Harvest caused by collectivization and forced requisition creates famine between 1932 and 1934 six to seven million Farmers die mostly in Ukraine [Music] the most terrible night was when they took my father I cried a lot and I still cry when I think about it excuse me and also when I remember the face of my friends at school and my family who died of starvation foreign the removal of culax as a social class causes 300 000 people to be sent to camps in three years along with the deportation of more than two million men women and children in special settlement camps where they are under house arrest [Music] in 1930 every inmate in prison is sent to labor camps the management of these camps is the ogpu's job the ogpu creates a central direction of the camps whose acronym in Russian is written gulag [Music] this reform and the creation of the gulag have an economic goal during the 1930s while Stalin launches Russia into an industrialization frenzy deported people become a key economic element this is no longer about assigning a couple of thousand inmates to logging like they did in slovkin this is about using cheap labor on a bigger scale for massive infrastructure work foreign the first major work of the Communists carried out by Gulag prisoners begins in 1931. it's the construction of the canal connecting the White Sea to the Baltic Sea the BBK 120 000 prisoners guarded by thousands of Watchmen work for 18 months to build a 227 kilometer long Canal including 39 kilometers carved in rocks 19 locks and 64 dams foreign [Music] the man who had implemented the food for work rationing system in solovki is leading the work digging the canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea is the first step in gigantic infrastructure projects Railways canals roads airports hydroelectric plants projects on which hundreds of thousands of prisoners will break their backs the word zek short for prisoner of the canal first appears on the BBK site before designating every Gulag prisoner the use of Labor that can be exploited at will overtakes the use of machines together [Music] we were carrying metal cables with our bare hands most of these cables all of them actually were old and sharp they were made of barbed wire our hands were wounded blood was flowing people often fell there were many wounded nothing was adapted and of course work in prison was incredibly difficult indeed the technology is archaic very few machines few trucks almost every tool is made on the spot wooden cranes wheelbarrow Wheels the inmate's muscle strength compensates for the absence of power hammers such methods dating from the Middle Ages turned the prisoners into slaves the workers are exhausted and sick twelve thousand of them die on the site ten percent of the total Workforce the corpses are left behind in the snow as spring grew closer and the snow started to melt we could see Hands arms and heads popping up next to us 150 meters away we saw all of this it stuck out from under the snow in the soil and flocks of crows Flew Over the Frozen corpses still fresh after packing them the regime's propaganda intends to show that the inmates are contributing to the construction of socialism as well their labor is a way to Redemption [Music] offers led by Gorky him again pay a visit to the BBK and celebrate the rebirth of the prisoners through Labor in a book dedicated to Stalin [Music] shows are organized all along the canal for propaganda and orchestras play music to support the workers [Music] but the weariness on every face crushes all propaganda efforts thank you [Music] in May 1933 Stalin yagoda leader of the GPU and in charge of the project and kirov inaugurate the canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea [Music] the event is celebrated as a great communist victory [Music] however in practice the BBK is less wide and less deep than anticipated and can only be used by ships with a shallow draft the canal will rarely be used a waste paid for in blood a staging to give the illusion that the goal has been reached that the party is always right a bluff also called tufta in the language of the gulag [Music] but it doesn't matter for Stalin the BBK is a fantastic and huge display of Soviet willingness in terms of production the gulags labor allows this country as vast as a continent to develop key infrastructure to colonize giant hostile Geographic expanses and to search for resources energy and ore [Applause] in April 1933 the gulag numbers almost 500 000 prisoners and gigantic projects keep coming at the same time as the BBK the GPU starts a massive construction site in the Far East of the country in a region of Siberia that reaches -50 degrees centigrade and is home to just a few reindeer farmers the project is to start exploiting the huge gold deposits of the Colima a lost territory almost unexplored of 2 million square kilometers the Colima has no Road connection with the rest of the country so the inmates must be brought to Vladivostok by train a two-month journey and then embark on a boat for two weeks to the nagaf Bay [Music] [Music] all right my boat was called Kulu and it's on that boat that we were brought to the nagayev Bay area Mikhail Tamarin is a student when he is arrested in 1937 and sent to the columnar [Music] we all had civilian clothes ideas we were freezing it was the 25th of December and by the time everyone had disembarked many of us had their nose or ears Frozen sometimes even fingers and toes it was awful you wouldn't actually start walking and snow is falling in some places it was five meters high it was blizzard I remember that terrible night in 1932 several thousand prisoners arrive first they are tasked with building the harbor and the town of Magadan from a small village of fishermen it becomes a true City then the inmates trace the one thousand kilometer Road leading to the gold deposits foreign one of the leaders of the GPU is tasked with organizing the giant columnar complex spreading over several thousand kilometers this picturesque character was like the tsar of Colima he moved around with a sidecar with his wife or in a Rolls-Royce that belonged to Lenin's wife and was given to him by Stalin ten thousand kilometers away from Moscow his power is unlimited eighty thousand prisoners living in Dreadful conditions dig the ground looking for gold during the winter life is horrendous a famous song known all over the USSR says o Enchanted Planet winter has 12 months everything else is summer Yuri fidelgoltz will serve 10 years in the hellish camps of Colima the fact that says one thing is sure I was forced to dig by hand can you imagine what it means to dig by hand or in its minus 50. deep the ground with a spike Norm was to dig 10 holes a day and each had to be 60 or 70 centimeters deep at least that was in a in a permafrost area Frozen land it was awful foreign is obsessed by rationalization and results he designs a new wheelbarrow whose capacity is four times bigger than the wheelbarrow previously used by the gold diggers in 1933 the daily rate of extraction of soil is one cubic meter the following year it becomes two cubic meters in 1937 for the same quantity of bread Burton wants four to six cubic meters per day depending on the deposit Ed I stayed exactly five years in this camp I was working nights mostly where we were forced to work a lot of course the guards changed we had to stay until we had filled the quotas and if we didn't we weren't allowed to go back to the camp all right when it comes to our tools we only had spikes shovels pickaxes and wheelbarrows that was it among the polymer as a sec will become the writer of anything related to the gulag varlam chalamov he is arrested once in 1929 due to counter-revolutionary trotskiest activities and sentenced to five years in a camp in 1937 he has arrested a second time and sent to the columnar chalamorph faces the most arduous labor with working days of 16 hours or more in the gold mines he's starving and beaten up by Common criminals and guards and wishes for death he will narrate his ordeal in the tales of the columnar where he'll stay 17 years [Music] foreign terrifying living conditions the slaves extract up to 52 tons of gold per year half of the Soviet production five years the columnar becomes the most important currency Reserve in the USSR the gulag is the territory of all those exiled from the Soviet Society they no longer have families belongings rights or dignity they have nothing left they are nothing slaves of the gulag went from 5000 to 500 000 within 10 years they're nothing but labor that can be exploited until exhaustion and death the prisoners literally work themselves to death arranged death matches the Soviet regime's goal of social political and ethnic Purge [Music] of other more healthy people are sent to the camp each year these massive waves of people this continuous supply of labor supervised by the GPU keep on feeding the productive machine of the gulag like an endless murderous process [Music] the Zacks work until exhaustion but the workforce itself is never ending [Music] mortality rate in the columnar reaches 10 percent per year during 1937-38 later on the prisoners called the columnar the white Crematory the road of the columnar nicknamed the road of Bones is like a Furrow of pain across the Frozen expanse [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary - History

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, History Documentary, Soviet Union, History of the Soviet Union, Gulag, Gulag Documentary, History of the Gulag, Russian Revolution, Communism, History of Communism, Communism Documentary, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Gulag Archipelago, Russia, Labor Camps, Gulag The Story, Gulag The Story Full Episodes, KGB, NKVD, dzerzhinsky

Id: 7fhI9YMyvOo

Length: 53min 24sec (3204 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2023