Gulag

Gulag (Russian: ????? {{Audio|ru-Gulag.ogg|listen}}) is an acronym for ??????? ?????????? ?????????????? ???????? ??????? ? ???????, "Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey i kolonii", "The Chief Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies". Anne Applebaum, in her book Gulag: A History, explains:

Terminology

Some authors refer to all prisons and camps throughout Soviet history (1917–1991) as the Gulags. Also, the term's modern usage is often notably unrelated to the USSR: for example, in such expressions as "North Korea's gulag", or even "America's Private Gulag". Note that the original Russian acronym, never in plural, described not a single camp, but the government institution in charge of the entire camp system.

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The term "corrective labor camp" was suggested for official use by the politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union session of July 27, 1929, as a replacement of the term concentration camp, commonly used until that time.

Related Topics:
Politburo - Concentration camp

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A colloquial name for a Soviet Gulag inmate was "zeka", "zek". In Russian, "inmate", "incarcerated" is "???????????", zaklyuchonny, usually abbreviated to '?/?' in paperwork, pronounced as '????' (zeh-KA), gradually transformed into '???' and to '???'. The word is still in colloquial use, irrelevant to labour camps. '?/?' initially was an acronym standing for "??????????? ???????????????", "zaklyuchonny kanalostroitel'" (incarcerated canal-builder), originating to the Volga-Don Canal slave workforce members. Later the term was backronymed to mean just "zaklyuchonny".

Related Topics:
Russian - Volga-Don Canal - Backronymed

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