Gulag: Soviet Prison Camps and Their Legacy

Curriculum for high school students. David Hosford, Pamela Kachurin, and Thomas Lamont, National Park Service/Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, n.d., 58 pgs., PDF, 1MB.
Most countries have prison systems where those convicted of crimes serve out their sentences. Citizens of these countries believe that people who commit crimes should be punished by being separated from the rest of society and deprived of some of their freedoms. However, the GULAG—the prison camp system that arose in the Soviet Union after 1929—served primarily as a way to gain control over the entire population, rather than punish criminal acts. The incarceration of millions of innocent people in the GULAG system is correctly seen as one of the worst and most shocking episodes of the twentieth century.