Welcome to the Russian History Retail Episode 273, the Soviet Gulag System, Part 1.

Last time, we covered the history of the Fabricet eggs and their family.

Today, we will begin a five-part series on one of the most tragic institutions in Soviet history, the Gulag.

Aside from my extensive library, my primary resources for this series includes several important books.

The first is a no-brainer, the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solchenitsen.

My second, and perhaps the broadest, looks into the Soviet prison system, and this was a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Gulag, The History, by Ann Applebaum.

I've also leaned on dressed for a dance in the snow, women's voices from the Gulag by Monica Zagustova, and women of the Gulag, portraits of five remarkable lives by Paul Gregory.

Applebaum's monumental work is not an easy read, nor are any of the aforementioned works.

Not because they're difficult intellectually, but because it is hard to come to grips with the depictions of the grim conditions and the suffering of the people sent to the Gulag.

One of my goals in using these books is to impart the emotions from the tales and information they share with the reader, as difficult as it may be to listen to.

The description of the Gulag and the people who suffered in them cannot be done through photographs.

While gruesome, a pictorial illustration doesn't quite do justice to the plight of the millions sent to these God-for-Bidden Hellholes.

This is why I think this series is so important, as there are still political prisoners in Russia today, under some of the same harsh treatments dealt out by the Soviet regime.

The Gulag system used by the communist government had its roots in Zara's Russia beginning in the 17th century.

These camps were based in Siberia and were considered forced labor prisons.

While the conditions in these places were pretty bad, they were nowhere near the kind of brutal conditions that the Soviets would develop starting right after the Bolshevik revolution.

As Applebaum puts it concerning the Zara's version of the Gulag's quote,

If life in Zara's exile did become intolerably unpleasant, there was always escape.

Stalin himself was arrested and exiled four times.

Three times he escaped, once from Irkutsk and trice from Volgada district, a region which later became Pockmarked with camps.

She further writes, quote,

Thus did their Siberian experience provide the Bolsheviks with an earlier model to build upon, and a lesson in the need for exceptionally strong punitive regimes.

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