How Did The Gulag Affect Russia During WWII?
How did the Gulag affect Russia during WWII?
As the stench of death and decay lingered in the air, an innocent peasant trudged through Siberia’s frozen mud with his primitive stone pickaxe to begin his fourteen-hour workday full of arduous labor and torturous conditions. However, this was neither the late-medieval Little Ice Age nor an exaggerated fictional scene--this was Soviet Russia’s very own Gulag. The infamous Gulag was an extensive system of prison camps that existed to provide the Motherland with an inexpensive and effective labor force through insanely harsh treatment; innocent people were sent to the camps to work onerous jobs without rest or nutrition. When the Soviet Union made the decision to enter World War II, Stalin directed …show more content…
For instance, the cost of labor in the Gulag was noticeably cheaper than that of any other country. Since the workers in the Gulag were barely fed, trained, or given adequate tools or shelter, they were worked for almost no cost whatsoever. According to experts in Russian history from Harvard along with the George Mason University, “Toiling sometimes in the most extreme climates, prisoners might spend their days felling trees with handsaws and axes or digging at frozen ground with primitive pickaxes. (...) Prisoners were barely fed enough to sustain such difficult labor” (George Mason University). The evidence shows that the amount of labor completed by prisoners was done for an astronomically low price as the prisoners had very little in the way of luxuries, food, or equipment that the government accounted for. Due to the high amount of raw resources and labor that resulted from such a small investment, the Gulag provided Russia with a definite advantage for World War II in terms of weapons, materials, and more. Similarly, how harshly the workers were being forced to work expedited labor for war. In fact, many were worked to death, but the sheer numbers of people made such loss insignificant when comparing feeding people to having some die. The editors of Encyclopedia Britannica write, “Inadequate food and summary executions killed off at least 10 percent of the …show more content…
As a result, Stalin suffered no political resistance during the war and forcefully attained much more of the aforementioned labor out of people who regularly would not contribute anywhere near as much for the war. Furthermore, an enormous number of people were forced to work in the Gulag camps, which ultimately resulted in much more work being finished. Although the exact numbers of the Gulag are not exactly known, scholars and victims of the Gulag have estimates for the number of people in the Gulag. Solzhenitsyn, a well noted victim of the Gulag, writes in the Archipelago(a name for Gulag describing how isolated and barbaric it was in an ocean of regularity), “We saw that millions of us prisoners were flowing past and knew that millions more would greet us in the camps” (Solzhenitsyn). The quote shows the utter number of prisoners inside of the camps: millions upon millions of prisoners existed only to toil away. Such a large number of people allowed for Russia to continue spending little to nothing malnourishing their slaves as a few thousand deaths meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Thus, Soviet Russia gained a lot of effective laborers through its insanely high rates of incrimination toward any viable
As the stench of death and decay lingered in the air, an innocent peasant trudged through Siberia’s frozen mud with his primitive stone pickaxe to begin his fourteen-hour workday full of arduous labor and torturous conditions. However, this was neither the late-medieval Little Ice Age nor an exaggerated fictional scene--this was Soviet Russia’s very own Gulag. The infamous Gulag was an extensive system of prison camps that existed to provide the Motherland with an inexpensive and effective labor force through insanely harsh treatment; innocent people were sent to the camps to work onerous jobs without rest or nutrition. When the Soviet Union made the decision to enter World War II, Stalin directed …show more content…
For instance, the cost of labor in the Gulag was noticeably cheaper than that of any other country. Since the workers in the Gulag were barely fed, trained, or given adequate tools or shelter, they were worked for almost no cost whatsoever. According to experts in Russian history from Harvard along with the George Mason University, “Toiling sometimes in the most extreme climates, prisoners might spend their days felling trees with handsaws and axes or digging at frozen ground with primitive pickaxes. (...) Prisoners were barely fed enough to sustain such difficult labor” (George Mason University). The evidence shows that the amount of labor completed by prisoners was done for an astronomically low price as the prisoners had very little in the way of luxuries, food, or equipment that the government accounted for. Due to the high amount of raw resources and labor that resulted from such a small investment, the Gulag provided Russia with a definite advantage for World War II in terms of weapons, materials, and more. Similarly, how harshly the workers were being forced to work expedited labor for war. In fact, many were worked to death, but the sheer numbers of people made such loss insignificant when comparing feeding people to having some die. The editors of Encyclopedia Britannica write, “Inadequate food and summary executions killed off at least 10 percent of the …show more content…
As a result, Stalin suffered no political resistance during the war and forcefully attained much more of the aforementioned labor out of people who regularly would not contribute anywhere near as much for the war. Furthermore, an enormous number of people were forced to work in the Gulag camps, which ultimately resulted in much more work being finished. Although the exact numbers of the Gulag are not exactly known, scholars and victims of the Gulag have estimates for the number of people in the Gulag. Solzhenitsyn, a well noted victim of the Gulag, writes in the Archipelago(a name for Gulag describing how isolated and barbaric it was in an ocean of regularity), “We saw that millions of us prisoners were flowing past and knew that millions more would greet us in the camps” (Solzhenitsyn). The quote shows the utter number of prisoners inside of the camps: millions upon millions of prisoners existed only to toil away. Such a large number of people allowed for Russia to continue spending little to nothing malnourishing their slaves as a few thousand deaths meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Thus, Soviet Russia gained a lot of effective laborers through its insanely high rates of incrimination toward any viable