The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago

Christine Gambino

Mercy College

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago

In this essay I will show and explain how the Vecheka has changed

throughout the Gulag’s history, including the economic and

political reasons for the Gulag and this essay will tell you

where the Gulag started physically and which territories it grew

to include. I will also show how the Gulag developed and through

survivors’ stories tell what daily life was like while in the

Gulag and what the effects are in the survivors’ life after their

release. This essay will have many viewpoints including the

leaders of the government in Russia and its territories (which

would eventually become the USSR), the Vecheka and all its forms

of secret police up until the KGB, and the prisoners’

perspective. “How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago?

Hour by hour plane fly there, ships steer their course there, and

trains thunder off to it-but all with nary a mark on them to tell

of their destination”(Solzhenitsyn 3).

HISTORY OF THE KGB 2

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago The Vecheka was the name given to the first security organization

during the time the Soviets formed the first state in 1917.

Vecheka means the All-Russian Extraordinary Commision for

Combatting Counter-revolution and Sabotage.

(nkvd.org/en/history.html). Lenin formed this organization to

try and keep anyone who was anti-communist out of society.

During this time two types of prisoners were arrested by the

Vecheka, either political or criminal or both. The decision on

whether or not a prisoner was “political” or “criminal” were

mostly handled on the local level and these distinctions were

often blurred, the characteristics of what was considered a

“political” or “criminal” violation varied upon the locale also,

and these differences developed the start of what the penal

system of USSR would look like for years to come. (Applebaum 6)

Lenin knew he could rehabilitate “criminals” such as pick-

pockets, thieves, murderers and other criminals easier than

“politicals” because of Lenin’s ethos that if you took

“lavishness” away it wouldn’t be necessary to commit these types

of crimes. Lenin was more concerned with the “class enemy”, this

included politicals, priests, anarchists, bourgeoise, tradesman,

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago bankers, anyone who partook in commerce; not only did the Cheka

arrest these people but also their families. The first leader of

the Vecheka was Felix Dzerzhinsky, he was a typical Soviet leader

handpicked by Lenin himself, uneducated but fervent in his belief

in the Party. Like much of early Soviet history the leaders were

careless with their planning on how to attain true communism, and

used mostly terror and fanaticism to succeed in the orders from

above. Dzerzhinsky once said in 1918 “”We stand for organized

terror-this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute

necessity in times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against

the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the order of the new

life. We judge quickly……”” (Simkin http://spartacus-

educational.com/RUScheka.htm) After an attempted assassination

of Lenin in 1918, Stalin ordered the Cheka to massacre anyone who

had ever shown any opposition to Lenin or communism this caused

the Red Terror; thousands of citizens were tortured, murdered or

sent to prison with no ability to defend oneself. In 1918 the

Vecheka renamed itself the NKVD (People’s Comissarit of Internal

Affairs) which controlled the police, fire, criminal

investigations, prison guards, and internal police.(

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago nkvd.org/en/history.html) This was the beginning of the Gulag

prison system. As time went on the secret police organization

went through many changes depending on the political scenario at

the time, but there was always an underground policing system.

There was a new configuration of the state security system in

1922 when there was relative peace due to the New Economic

Policy; this included the NKVD controlling the GPU (State

Political Directorate).( nkvd.org/en/history.html) In 1923, when

the USSR was established there were two departments for

controlling state and internal security, the NKVD supervised

internal security decisions and the OGPU(Unified State Political

Directorate) governed the states security. The OGPU detained and

murdered hundreds and thousands of “kulaks”(which means fist in

Russian, they were people who were considered tight fisted with

their grain) since Stalin came to power. This was Stalin’s way

of ridding the USSR of merchants, and bourgeoisie again to allow

communism to continue, this system continued with citizens barely

living above a prisoner’s life for many years. The

collectivization and dekukalization that occurred for the next

ten years lead to another formation of the secret police which in

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago 1934 was renamed the GUGB (Chief Directorate of State Security)

that worked under the all-Union NKVD (nkvd.org/en/history.html).

Before 1934 there was no formal name for the department of prison

camps which was under the power of the NKVD and this is when the

actual name of GULAG (Chief Directorate of Camps) was given along

with many other subdivisions. The heads of the NKVD (Iagoda,

Yezhov, Beria; with methods very similar to Dzerzhinsky) up until

1941, which included the Great Purges which encompassed the

reorganization of the hierarchy through murder, prison and other

treacherous ways maintained this system. In 1941 the new name

was NKGB but that was not going to last long because once again

the system was split into the GUGB and the NKVD because war had

started and the GUGB needed to give more consideration to the

war. (nkvd.org/en/history.html) Once things turned around in

favor of USSR in the war in 1943 the leaders combined the

departments and changed the name back to NKGB. After WWII in

1946 all parts of government were named ministries therefore MVD

and MGB were born, these names were kept until Stalin died in

1953 when Beria named the internal and state police system MVD.

In 1954 the final change was made; the state security department

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago was called the KGB, which reported directly to the Prime Minister

and it’s Cabinet.( nkvd.org/en/history.html)

HISTORY OF THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO

The GULAG system began in the seventeenth century, which was the

Tsars way of taking any extra grain, or commodities away from the

peasants and sending them north to Siberia to work; these farmers

were imprisoned and tortured and this treatment continued into

the twentieth century. The location of the GULAG archipelago

spanned”…from the islands of the White Sea to the shores of the

Black Sea from, from the Arctic Circle to the plains of Central

Asia, from Murmansk to Vorkuta to Kazakhstan, from central

Moscow, to Leningrad suburbs.” (

http://www.thegulag.org/content/gulag-introduction-3) Lenin the

great believer in Marxism used these same tactics to keep the

peasants living on what he thought was enough to live and keep

them under his control. Lenin was educated and an advanced

political revolutionary. Lenin saw enemies of the state as

people who were religious, merchants and aristocrats and they

must be rehabilitated by forced labor and torture, the Cheka

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago arrested traditional criminals as well. In the beginning of the

Gulag system the Cheka came up with a way to house these

criminals, which was in old palaces and monasteries on the

outskirts of town. They were called concentration camps and held

prisoners that would do menial labor, such as digging trenches

and clearing snow off of train tracks, this was partially to

complete the task but, also to show the aristocrats and merchants

what it was like to do a physically hard day of work like

peasants. From 1917 on the mass arrests that were brought on by

quotas set from above, with no clear way to meet these quotas

caused disarray and overcrowding in these prisons. During this

time there were massive briberies that were taking place and

prisoners came and went as they pleased and homeless people would

go into the prisons to sleep. Also during this time until about

1919 when Lenin decided to go East and North to develop this

territory for Russia were camps set up to rehabilitate citizens

that had disobeyed Lenin’s rule. “….by the end of 1919 there

were twenty-one registered camps in Russia. At the end of 1920

there were 107, five times as many.”(Applebaum, 9) SLON

( Northern Camps of Special Significance), which was a name for

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago the concentration camps were set up in the Northwestern part of

Russia that Ukrainians, Russians and other nationalities first

came to be resettled to mine for coal and other natural

resources.( http://thegulag.org/exhibits/gulag-timeline). During

the 1920’s the GULAG went through a tremendous growth; this was

due to Lenin and after Lenin’s death Stalin calling for

collectivization (peasants from one village working together to

produce grain for the USSR). This period in Gulag history a camp

might have been either a mud hut, a dwelling made out of

branches, a free standing lean-to or an actual barracks that was

part of a traditional camp. As of 1928 in traditional camps due

to Neftali Frenkel who was once a prisoner of the Gulag’s

developed the idea of ones ability to earn food based on the type

of job a prisoner had and how much they produced. Another reason

for the influx of prisoners during the 1920’s was because of

Article 58 in the penal code, Article 58 said that anybody who

was a counter-revolutionary had to serve time- counter-

revolutionary had a broad range of meanings and was based on the

arresting officers inclination. In 1932 prisoners of Gulags

were used to build the White Sea Canal, Neftali Frenkel was on

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago the committee to design and build this canal. As time went on

the camp system grew east into Kolyma, north into Komi and south

through to Kazakhstan. From 1937-1938 the Great Purges occurred,

this was when Stalin decided on removing any opponents in the

party to form a true totalitarian rule. This led to mass arrests

and by 1938 there were 1.8 million prisoners in the GULAG.(

http://thegulag.org/exhibits/gulag-timeline) From 1939-1941

prisoners started coming from Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and

Latvia due to the Curzon line. With the acceptance of the Curzon

line, parts of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia became

territories of the USSR. These prisoners were being resettled to

tap into the natural resources that the open lands of the North

provided. The Gulag’s occupation rate receded as the USSR

entered WWII because the USSR needed all its men to fight for the

USSR and the USSR turned out to be on the winning side of WWII.

As the war was on conditions in camps were abysmal and thousands

of prisoners died due to starvation, freezing temperatures and

unhealthy living conditions. In the 1950 there were 2.5 million

prisoners in the Gulag(http://thegulag.org/content/stats-

prisoners), but after that since Stalin died there was a downward

10

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago turn of the quantity of prisoners put into the Gulag after 1950.

The cost and upkeep of the Gulag system never paid for itself

even though prisoners built, the White Sea Canal, and the Baikul-

Amur railway, because there was too much bribery, squandering,

poor planning and products that were unusable. “Camp officials

stole camp property and sold it on the black market or they

oversaw who did so.”

(http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Corruption+in+the+Gulag

%3a+dilemmas+of+officials+and+prisoners.-a0133684237) The people

of the conquered lands of the USSR paid with their lives.

THE PRISONERS LIFE IN THE GULAG

The prisoners’ life in the Gulag system depended on who was

running their camp, when they were put into the camp and what

type of prisoner they were classified as. In the beginning of

the Gulag system people were separated into politicals and

“criminals”. Politicals could lead a better life due to the

organization they belonged to in the prison and outside of the

prison. Political prisoners were allowed to write newspapers,

put on plays and musicals, and have an orchestra. They were also

11

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago allowed to receive packages from the outside and have visitors

also. Eventually criminals started running the camps and the

inmates of the camps were people who were seen as “class

enemies”. These criminals who ran the camp could be bought off

easily by the prisoners themselves and depending on the crime and

the boss. Prisoners could buy their way to better jobs which

would allow them more food and more of a chance of survival.

There were several types of barracks within the actual GULAG,

there could be a woman’s barracks, children’s barracks, family

barracks; there was always the highest commander’s barracks,

there might be a hospital and a quarantine barrack if there was

an epidemic of a disease in the camp and a kitchen. In the Gulag

system there were also different work camps, some camps were for

the worst “criminals”(class enemies), which entailed hard labor

and no food. (Special) There were the regular prison camps that

were described above.

The trip to prison itself could kill a person. The arrest

process was varied and shocking to most; whether walking down the

street or taken at night from your home, or going on a train to

another part of town the police was there to fulfill their 12

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago quotas. You were put on a train for many days with barely any

food or clothing and brought a whole new world that you haven’t

ever experienced before. Also people in the camps were tortured

for being class enemies; an example of this is when they put a

prisoner on a stool and tied his feet and hands together with a

stone on the end of the rope without letting his feet touch the

stool for an entire day, this would leave a person crippled.

When you got to the Gulag you were faced with barking dogs, cold

temperatures and cold stares. The living conditions for the

prisoners were barely livable with

1.2m2(http://thegulag.org/content/stats-living-space-0) of living

space per prisoner and the daily ration of bread being 19.4

ounces (http://thegulag.org/content/stats-living-space-0) on

average, “the most productive workers received a food bonus of

fish, potatoes, porridge or vegetables to supplement his bread.”(

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n1p39_michaels.html)prisoners were

prone to disease and starvation. Prisoners could break off their

fingers and toes due to frostbite. The death rate of the Gulag

prisoner was ten percent annually during non-war times and

twenty-five percent during war years.(

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago http://thegulag.org/content/stats-death-rate) Yet some Jews that

were persecuted by the Nazis chose to get to the Soviet side of

Poland because Jews hadn’t started to be wanted by the Soviets

yet. Mina Kalter a WWII

survivor(https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?

p=youtube.com+shoah+foundation&vid=217243c3227ddca4b0988c253340e9

ef&l=4%3A02%3A08&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid

%3DVN.608054240043598823%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F

%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv

%3D9KI5y7LWG6U&tit=Jewish+Survivor+Mina+Kalter+Testimony+Part1&c=

1&sigr=11aic100l&sigt=11bl478td&ct=p&age=0&b=151&tt=b) tells of

how she snuck out of line in a prison march of the Nazis and swam

across a river to reach the Ukraine from Poland because she knew

she wouldn’t be persecuted. She did have to go to the Gulag, but

the conditions for her in the Gulag were tolerable compared to

her other prison stay under the Nazis; later on though the USSR

would persecute Jews.

EFFECTS OF THE GULAG

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago There are many effects of the Gulag that still are felt today.

In the article “My Grandfather the Gulag Escapee: A Life

Reconstructed” (http://armenianweekly.com/2014/09/01/grandfather-

gulag-escapee/) the author writes of his grandfather and his

surviving five years in the Gulag. The author says that he

wished he was able to hear the story from his grandfather himself

but was unable to because he was only eight when his grandfather

died and he never spoke to him about his survival because he was

too young for his grandfather to discuss the Gulag with such a

young child. The author of this article is proud of his

grandfather for surviving but also because of his memoir that was

published “Under the Stalin Sun”. Mina Kalter the WWII survivor,

says by surviving the war she and her sons and husband in the

United States carry on the same traditions that she herself grew

up with and that is how she honors her deceased family.(

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?

p=youtube.com+shoah+foundation&vid=217243c3227ddca4b0988c253340e9ef&l=4%3A02%3

A08&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DVN.608054240043598823%26pid

%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv

%3D9KI5y7LWG6U&tit=Jewish+Survivor+Mina+Kalter+Testimony+Part1&c=1&sigr=11aic1

00l&sigt=11bl478td&ct=p&age=0&b=151&tt=b )

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago The survivors of the Gulag have their own subculture, after

years of imprisonment and then freedom you are a different

person. This includes language, art and literature. An example

of how Russians use prison language is” “Svat NIKTO-familiya-

NIKAK”(“My name is –NOTHING, my family name is NOBODY”) which is

used in modern Russia today that was said when people were on

their way to prison.( http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-

origin/the-gulag/) In music, several musicians who had never

served time in the Gulag told stories of the life of a prisoner

in their music, from these songs phrases and sayings were made

common in Russia in the 1960’s and 1970’s.(

http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-gulag/) Memoirs

by survivors of the Gulag who were finally able to publish their

memoirs such as Solzhenitsyn, Dolgun and Ginzburg represent the

outrage felt by the Soviets who knew of the Gulags and did

nothing about it, but by surviving and telling the story shows

their great strength.( http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-

origin/the-gulag/)

As I conclude, the Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago was its own

secret world with its own rules and regulations. This makes it a 16

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago complicated part of Soviet history and the main reason for both

of the systems in Soviet history was the desire for socialism.

This desire for pure socialism would turn into totalitarianism

and communism. The leaders of the Soviet state and then the USSR

were never one hundred percent sure on how to achieve this goal

and developed these systems so they could use terror and

brutality to achieve their goals. This lack of knowledge caused

millions of deaths; an enemy of the state is the title that you

were given if your father was a merchant, or tradesmen. This

fear of one part of society caused a system that didn’t succeed

and affected millions of people throughout countries and regions

of Soviet control.

THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago

THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO CONTINUED

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago

BIBLIOGRAPHY19

The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago

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Khlevniuk, Oleg V. 2004 The History of the Gulag, From Collectivization to the Great Terror New Haven, London Yale University Press

Heinzen, James “Corruption in the Gulag: Dilemmas of Officials and Prisoners” The Free Library June 1, 2005 retrieved on November 20, 2014 from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Corruption+in+the+Gulag%3a+dilemmas+of+officials+and+prisoners.-a0133684237

Michaels, Dan (January-February 2002) The Gulag: Communisms Penal Colonies Revisited, The Journal of Historical Review, Volume 21 number1 Page 39, Retrieved November 18, 2014 from http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n1p39_michaels.html

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Oganessian, Suren (September 2014) My Grandfather the Escapee: A Life Reconstructed The Armenian Weekly retrieved November 18, 2014 fromhttp://armenianweekly.com/2014/09/01/grandfather-gulag-escapee/

Simkin, John (November 18, 2014) Communist Secret Police: Cheka retrieved from http://spartacus-educational.com/RUScheka.htm

Simkin, John (November 18, 2014) Communist Secret Police: NKVD retrieved from http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSnkvd.htm

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 1973The Gulag Archipelago (T.P. Whitney and H. Willets trans 1985) (E.E. Ericson Jr. abridged) New York, London, Toronto, Sydney HarperPerrenial

Viola, Lynne 2007 The Unknown Gulag, The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements Oxford, University Press

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The Vecheka and the Gulag Archipelago Werth, Nicolas, The NKVD Mass Secret National Operations (August 1937 - November 1938), Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, 20 May 2010, accessed 19 November 2014, URL : http://www.massviolence.org/The-NKVD-Mass-Secret-National-Operations-August-1937

History of the NKVD November 18, 2014 retrieved from http://nkvd.org/en/history.html

Jewish Survivor Mina Kalter Testimony Part 1, December 26, 1997 USC Shoah Foundation retrieved November 13, 2014 from https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=youtube.com+shoah+foundation&vid=217243c3227ddca4b0988c253340e9ef&l=4%3A02%3A08&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DVN.608054240043598823%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D9KI5y7LWG6U&tit=Jewish+Survivor+Mina+Kalter+Testimony+Part1&c=1&sigr=11aic100l&sigt=11bl478td&ct=p&age=0&b=151&tt=b

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