[Music] the gulag a repressive and criminal system whose sheer size and Longevity are unusual is a major historical phenomenon of the 20th century creat as early as 1918 the Soviet camps became a centralized and organized concentration camp system in the beginning of the 1930s the collectivization of the land sent hundreds of thousands of farmers to the gulag such forced labor was used to build the massive infrastructure of the [Music] USSR the gulag was like a country within a country a lost conent an independent civilization difficult to see and to this day still unknown and [Music] misunderstood [Music] [Music] on the 26th of January in 1934 the delegates of the Communist party's 17th Congress arrived at the Kremlin the party's dignitaries arrived by car like kirov and [Music] Molotov others gathered near the entrance St this Congress symbolized Stalin's final [Applause] [Applause] Triumph he is on the Tribune surrounded by his personal [Applause] guard speakers follow one another all proclaiming Stalin's merits unrivaled Genius of our time or quite simply the greatest man of all time and of all [Music] people amid the Never ending flow of Praise no one questioned the decisions of 1929 to 1930 decisions that led to catastrophic results agriculture production dropped by 40% starvation purchasing power dropped by 50% political repression exploded forced labor [Music] [Applause] [Music] expanded sery kirov calls this Congress Congress of the winners under the watchful eye of Nikita kushev who's in charge of the party in [Music] Moscow Stalin explains the difficulties encountered during the process of building socialism the political goal is correct and the party cannot be wrong therefore problems and delays are obviously a mismatch between What was decided and what was [Music] done the 5-year plan couldn't be carried out because of [Music] sabotage The Conspiracy Theory helps explain the major difference between what was promised and what was done between speeches and reality 11 months later on the 1st of December 1934 sery kirov member of the polit bureau and first Secretary of the Leningrad party is murdered by Leonid nicolov a young communist kirov was the lover of niv's wife kiro's assassination an isolated action by a jealous husband is a blessing for Stalin he uses kiro's murder to trigger the repression within 3 weeks the nkvd the new GPU pretends to discover that the crime has been committed by a certain center of Leningrad members of this Center are convicted inclosed hearing and executed this is a pretext to attack zinovev and cev themselves Lenin's companions they are arrested and convicted on the basis of ideological connivance with kiro's assassins the repressive Machinery is getting out of [Music] hand the 17th Congress of the Communist Party had officially announced that socialism had been successfully implemented in the USSR to quote the pompous words used this was the beginning of an era of unprecedented abundance in the history of mankind as official propaganda claimed it life has become better life has become happier these words were taken from one of Stalin speeches and are displayed in all public areas and even on the entrance gates to the labor [Music] camps propaganda movies show Happy Soviets enjoying some kind of Doge Vita the parties and States officials are part of a privileged social class called nomenclatura and while waiting for abundance to benefit everyone it certainly benefits a few thousand apparat chics who are able to enjoy material advantages such as comfortable Apartments special shops and vacations near the Black Sea [Music] [Music] while the neura is having fun the number of prisoners of the gulag crosses for the first time the threshold of 1 million in in [Music] 1935 1 million prisoners and another million outcasts called specially displaced people deported to settlement villages usually located in the same hostile regions as the gulags camps after the construction of the canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea after extracting gold in the cola poit Bureau tasks the nkvd with carrying out another gigantic project building a canal connecting the mosa with the [Music] vulga in 1933 as soon as the construction of the canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea is completed part of the bbk's labor is moved to the massive deit like construction site which got its name from the camp in charge of the work on the mosa vulga [Music] canal for once more the regime's propaganda shows how such tremendous work is being carried out to music trucks and machines are starting to appear but despite them the Zex continue to dig to suffer and to die [Music] during its apex almost 200,000 prisoners work on the project 30,000 of them die [Music] there in 1936 during the final construction phase of the canal which must be ready by October 1937 for the 20th anniversary of the Revolution the workday is extended to 12 or even 14 hours teams work in shifts day and night in the cold and the wind horrendous [Music] conditions Stalin himself pays a visit to the site images show us the Z happily greeting the little father of the people who sent them to hell yet another huge construction is launched using the forced labor of the gulag the track for a second Trans Siberian called bam bolo Amaya magistral the building of this strategic Railway of more than 1,500 km begins in 1933 and continues until the middle of the 1940s at the end of the 1930s almost 200,000 prisoners toil on the site and 10,000 of them die there one death every 150 m [Music] in the vast area of the Uka and petera north of the Polar Circle the ground is full of oil and coal in the beginning of the 1930s the gulag slaves are sent in Mass there to exploit a region infested with mosquitoes 100,000 Z are digging shafts to extract The Ore soon there will be 20 coal mines in Winter the temperatures drop to -60° Centigrade the night lasts 3 months here in this Frozen catacomb the prisoners will create from nothing the town of vuta which will become the capital of one of the greatest coal areas in the USSR the nkvd sends to vuta the most dangerous Political Criminals as they call them [Music] the construction of a railway blocked during most of the Year by snow and ice starts in [Music] 1936 in the middle of the 1930s the gag has become a giant Administration that uses is the workforce of all prisoners in the USSR the gulag industry becomes an essential Cog of the Soviet economy the Camp's locations coincide with a number of major projects 200,000 prisoners are digging the canal connecting the MOs to the vulgar in the diid 70,000 prisoners handle the maintenance work of the White Sea Baltic Sea canal in the BBT lag 100,000 prisoners work in the oil and coal deposits of the Uka and petera region and build the town of vuta in the UK petag 30,000 prisoners are extracting resources from the Virgin lands of Kazakhstan in the carag 60,000 prisoners work in the coal mines of kubas in the [Music] sibl 70,000 prisoners build the railway and the roads in the cabaro region in the dag 200,000 prisoners build the railway connecting the Bal Lake to the Amma River in the baml 880,000 prisoners extract gold of the Cola in the dstroy concentration camp likee facilities appear everywhere like [Music] metastasis is during the three madeup Moscow trials in August 1936 January 1937 and March 1938 the highest figures of the Old leninist Guard suffer torture and publicly confess so-called crimes of treason sabotage and [Music] terrorism Stalin executes his old companion zinovev CF and bukharin without batting an eye 10 years before he was hugging them a major campaign is launched in the whole country to stigmatize the accused the goal is to lead people to accept that the Revolutionary Heroes of yesterday have become the traitors and [Music] spies [Applause] public meetings in factories and culk hoses position the Fallen leaders as scapegoats responsible for the difficulties encountered wellb building socialism the Moscow trials reflect the great Terror they attract attention from all over the world while hiding the purge happening in the prisons and inside the nkv D's office the execution of the old bulvik masks the sheer size of the repression that strikes the everyday man indeed within a couple of months 120,000 communist officials are arrested and convicted half of them received the death penalty Alexander brov was an engineer and a member of the Communist Party he was arrested in [Music] 1937 three people came around midnight one stood by the door while the other started their search they woke up my son they were looking for counterrevolutionary texts but they didn't find any yet I ended up in the Lanka the lubianka in Moscow is the headquarters of the nkvd it's a prison where people are tortured and shot Olga amadova slosberg was a communist activist too and she was arrested at [Music] home we were arrested on the basis of having joined the plot to kill kaganovich i' never even seen kaganovich my six-year-old son was sitting in his bedroom I came in and I said do not cry darling I'm going on a mission and he answers dad is on a mission now you too if the nanny also goes on a mission who should we stay with on Stalin's direct order family members of the Fallen communist leaders are tracked down and arrested especially their [Music] wives on this document Stalin added with a blue pen that the families of the traitors should be systematically sentenced to eight years in labor camps instead of five as it was initially [Music] planned and while members of the party are purged the same thing happens to thousands of nkvd leaders such as Michal Po's [Music] father and he came home he dropped his suitcase and hugged me and then n kvd's agents knocked in the door we didn't know what was going on later on we were told that he'd been sentenced to 10 years without mail rights without mail right means execution m mom died in 1938 in a way everything inside her disappeared the shock was so strong she was still a young woman she was 38 but she she died inside the gulags camp leaders also faced The Purge among many others there's Edward bedin the man with the Rolls-Royce who had led the camp in the Colma he is shot in the basement of the lubianka or Alexander nov first commander of the solovki camp who is arrested and deported in 1938 to the gulag [Music] then comes the turn of the army Marshall tokashi a man who kept warning about the danger Hitler represented is accused of being a spy working for the Gusto he is executed in June 1937 along with him 40,000 high ranking officials including most of the generals are eliminated the Red Army has lost its [Music] head the goal of The Purge of political economic military and polic related Elites is to replace leaders of the leninist Revolution period by a younger generation more obedient and that can more easily be manipulated politically and ideologically a generation shaped by the Stalin spirit and thus a new collection of leaders arises whose amazing careers are owed to Stalin the guide a person they will be completely devoted to the revolution is eating up those who created it The Purge of the Communist officials is impressive yet Mass executions reach much much further than the Communists they are but one tenth of the victims in 1936 yagoda head of the nkvd since 1934 and responsible for the gags expansion is arrested he is shot in 1938 as a right-wing [Music] trotskyist [Music] yof received the nickname of bloodthirsty he's barely more than 1.5 M high and as head of the nkvd he'll carry out the greatest State massacre to ever take place in Europe during peace time within 16 months from August 1937 to November 1938 around 750,000 Soviet citizens are killed after being sentenced to death by a special Court following a series of sham trials that's almost 50,000 executions per month 1,600 per day during the Great Terror one adult Soviet out of 100 is killed in secret with a bullet in the [Music] neck [Music] one example among hundreds of thousands of others Gabriel boganov this former kulak who escaped Exile in Siberia is arrested on August the 8th 19 37 photographed on the 12th accused with encouraging counterrevolutionary actions interrogated on the 15th of August sentenced to death on the 19th and shot on the 20th as can be seen on the execution [Music] order the starting point of this murderous Mass Purge is a note written by Stalin on the 2nd of July 193 37 the red dictator asks that the most hostile criminals be immediately arrested and [Music] shot in order to carry out the order Nikolai yof publishes on the 30th of July 1937 the nkvd operational order number 047 sent to all regional nkvd leaders this incredible document the cause behind the death of hundreds of thousands of people stipulates that home security agencies have the mission to eradicate in the most ferocious manner all anti-soviet elements and to end once and for all the threat represented by those who undermine the very foundations of the Soviet state suspects are divided into two two categories the first one means execution the second means the gulag for 10 years order 047 then goes on to list quotas of people to arrest per region in the First Column are the executions to perform in the second people to send to the gulag [Music] the operation starts in August 1937 and is supposed to last 4 months it'll last 15 instead yof clearly sets the tone on the eve of the first day of the great Terror if we end up shooting a thousand people more than expected during this operation this is fine [Music] the operations are secret planned and centralized and decided at the highest level within the Party by Stalin and yof along with Stalin's closest allies Molotov kaganovich voroshilov mikoyan the purpose of these secret Mass operations is to remove for good any threat in order to purify the Soviet Society Terror becomes part of everyday life Soviet citizens are paralyzed and live in the fear of being arrested at 3:00 a.m. they arrived and knocked on our door he opened there were three nkvd officials they come in and ask who's living here with you he answers my wife and my two children line up against the wall all four of you then they continued to search the house but they didn't find anything yet they took Dad away we went to the prison there were a lot of people there making written complaints we did the same with Mom someone told us ah these are political prisoners they've been sent to Siberia last night in a freight train he's no longer here you won't hear from him for the next 20 years you won't have access to [Music] mail one of the characteristics of this massive Purge is secrecy secrecy of the Judgment usually done behind closed doors secrecy of the execution that takes place in unknown locations families of those sentenced to death are never informed they just kept tormenting them there when my father ended up there and they started to interrogate him he refused to sign the deposition he was a lightweight boxer and he could lift a man by the throat and hold him against a wall he didn't sign he threw them all out of the office where were they brought closed the back of the truck and that's it it wasn't a closed vehicle but a truck to carry merchandise that's the last time I saw my father how can you forget it haunts you forever [Music] I was there when they arrested my mother it happened at midnight I was already in my bed nkvd agents came into my bedroom and I could hear the sounds of their boots my mother kissed me before leaving but I remained silent huddled up and Afraid my fear was both mental and physical and I didn't move when my mother left I couldn't even see clearly because of my tears I don't know in what circumstances they arrested my father but I never saw my parents again [Music] the great Terror leads to an unprecedented influx of prisoners in the camps within 2 years almost 1.5 million people the ones from category 2 who escaped execution by Yo's minions are sent to the gulag in January 1939 there's almost 2 million prisoners including 43% of political prisoners who were sentenced based on article 58 of the penal code for counterrevolutionary crimes such a percentage will never be reached again during Stalin's [Music] time the great Terror ends suddenly on November the 17th 1938 following a decision by Stalin executions are stopped and yov is held responsible he resigns from all his functions in 1940 the bloodthirsty turned alcoholic is executed tell Stalin that I'll die with his name on my lips are his last words before being shot in 1938 lavrenti berer becomes head of the nkvd he is one of Stalin's closest friends barer is a professional killer who gathered experience in [Music] Georgia one of his first tasks is to deeply reorganize the gulag in order to make it more profitable for from an economic point of view a vast inspection of the camps begins in early 1939 and concludes that the Z are in a catastrophic State and can no longer work the whole internal organization of the gulag is revamped the giant groups of camps are decentralized and divided into smaller units organized around economic branches the productive function of the gag is obvious when looking at the new internal structure indeed the division is no longer made based on geography but based on the economy direction of hydroelectrical constructions direction of Railway constructions direction of non-ferrous Metals Etc as the war draws closer the government sends more and more strategic orders to the nkvd the prisoners are to build or renovate more than 200 military airports August the 23rd 1939 ribbon trop Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Third Reich flies off to Moscow to everyone's surprise the USSR and Nazi Germany sign a non-aggression agreement [Music] one Clause of the secret protocol added to the agreement plans for the division of Poland the Red Army invades Poland on the 17th of September 17 days after the verar [Music] attacked soon the Nazi officers and the Soviets are splitting the country between themselves as soon as they reach the Polish territory under the control of the Red Army the nkvd gets to work about 25,000 polish citizens belonging to the country's military civil and economic Elite are executed in April 1940 as sworn enemies of the Soviet [Music] system thousands of officers are executed with a bullet through their neck and buried in Mass graves in ctin and [Music] elsewhere additionally between September 1939 and June 1941 around 110,000 polish citizens are arrested and sentenced to forc labor in the gulags camps by the nkvd special courts among them are many Jews who escaped West Poland after the Germans invaded [Music] it then within 18 months about 320,000 polish citizens are deported to the settlement Villages bordering the gulags camps in the north of Russia inside Liberia and in Kazakhstan after Poland the Red Army invades the Baltic states Estonia Lithuania and Latvia are being converted to the Soviet way of life and here too the nkvd is working controlling the population while the political police organizes spontaneous parades it also also supervises arrests and deportations in the [Music] shadows Yanna Marin's father is arrested at home I came into our bedroom my sister is screaming and crying while my mother is sitting on her chair her gaze drifting away I asked right away what happened and my sister answered they took Dad they arrested [Music] dad in the spring of 1941 the nkvd organizes major roundups in the newly conquered [Music] territories tens of thousands of people people from the area in Poland occupied by the Soviets from malavia conquered by the USSR in 1940 and from the Baltic states are deported to camps in Siberia or the great [Music] North on June the 22nd 1941 the vermar attacks the USSR the German push is incredibly quick and leads to hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners cities and Villages are destroyed and burnt down the German Advance during the first couple of months of the War forces the nkvd to evacuate its prisons and camps located in the western part of the USSR from July to December 1941 more than 700,000 prisoners are transferred to the east means of transportation are lacking since most of them are needed for the war and many prisoners are evacuated on foot having to walk several hundreds of kilometers these evacuations often turn into death marches amid complete chaos [Music] when time is lacking to organize the transfer the prisoners are simply killed in lavor alone 7,000 inmates are shot when the Nazis reach the place they unearth the bodies and use them for their [Music] propaganda the Gul Administration freezes the possibility of release for political prisoners from the first day of the German invasion however almost 600,000 convicts sentenced for minor crimes are freed before having served their time and added to the Army during the years of war in total more than 1 million common criminals are released in advance and sent from the gulag to the front [Music] in the gulags camps life conditions drastically deteriorate the evacuation to the east of hundreds of thousands of prisoners worsens the overpopulation problem in the camps the standard level of calories in 1942 had dropped by 60% compared to what it was before the war [Music] the prisoners face foul conditions and starvation during winter 1941 to 1942 25% of the gulag population starves to death in 1942 typhus and Cera appear once more in various [Music] camps in the beginning we were so happy happy to be finally free from such tough work but then we started to have fever and hallucinations some women were delirious and agitated they were taken away but we didn't know where they never came back but we made it we weren't given anything no medicine nothing we just [Music] survived everybody knows that the most deadly year in the gulag was 1942 winter of 4142 took many lives mercilessly people died of hunger cold [Music] exhaustion there were many dead people in this [Music] camp this was the only camp where you truly saw corpses people died because ofy distrophy I that's hunger because of the awful [Music] food lice dirtiness and everything else only sick people whose hopelessness we could see in their souls in their eyes everywhere people who can't do anything anymore who don't want to do anything anymore who think that everything is over [Music] a huge mortality rate you climb down off your bedstead and you shout to the woman in charge hey there are two more who don't move here fine we'll take them away all right a camp where there's no longer any life any awareness of the fact these are human beings with desires then they were piled up they were unrecognizable they were no longer people not monkeys either just hairy and dirty beings nothing but Skin and Bones and tatters it was impossible to tell if these were human beings or God knows what we piled up the bodies like wood each corpse had a small wooden board attached to its leg that listed the name birth date reason for conviction and [Music] Punishment [Music] during summer 1943 the progress of the Red Army frees certain regions conquered by the vermar the Soviet soldiers are happily welcomed by populations who suffered from the German occupation but the nkvd resumes its arest rests right away the sole fact of having continued work during the occupation is enough to be arrested and charged with treason towards the motherland Elena markova's father was shot and she was arrested in 1943 when she was 20 because I worked As an interpreter at the labor Council something I never hid I always said that I worked there I was sentenced to 15 years in the penal colony a new category of camps is created in 1943 for the so-called traitors penal colonies with particular particularly harsh life conditions in 1944 to 1945 the number of prisoners Rises sharply as the Red Army moves towards the westal colonies especially in 1944 to 1945 the plac is inhabited by many so-called fascist prisoners and officials thought they should just die that's why penor colonies were known for their High mortality rate in the end almost 4 million War prisoners most of them German are captured and forced to work to rebuild the USSR in camps managed by the nkvd these camps are similar to the [Music] gulag propaganda films shot in 1944 show a camp in Kazakhstan where German prisoners are treated with respect in practice though several hundreds of thousands of German war prisoners die in these camps due to illness hunger cold or [Music] persecution in April 194 45 the Red Army takes over Berlin the end of the war could Mark the beginning of better tomorrows for the Soviets but it's not the case the gulag archipelago continues its Unstoppable [Music] propagation [Music] see
