Brilliant Maps

Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time

  • BOOK!
  • Newsletter
  • Board Games
  • Posters
  • Scratch Maps

Map of The Soviet Gulag Archipelago 1923-1961

January 23, 2016 1 Comment

Map of The Soviet Gulag Archipelago 1923-1961

Map created by Antonu via Wikimedia

The map above, shows the locations of the Soviet Union’s Gulag forced labour camps, that existed between 1923 and 1961. This system has also become known as the Gulag Archipelago based on the title of the book written by Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The term Gulag is an acronym for Гла́вное управле́ние лагере́й (Glavnoye upravleniye lagerey), the “Main Camp Administration”.

While the Soviet system of labour camps goes back to 1918, following the Bolshevik revolution, the Gulag camps reached their peak under Stalin from the 1930’s into the 1950’s.

The population fell briefly during World War 2, both due to starvation and prisoners being released to fight the Nazis, but it’s been estimated that between 2.3 and 50 million people passed through the system at one point during its existence.

While the camps are often seen as being prisons designed for political prisoners, the truth is that they housed a range of prisoners from petty criminals to hardened convicts. Moreover, while they were not explicitly death camps, like those run by the Nazis, they did have significantly higher mortality rates than standard prisons.

One of the more surprising things revealed in the map above, is that majority of the camps were located in the Western part of the USSR, where the majority of the Soviet Union’s people lived, and not in Siberia. Although, the camps located in Siberia tended to be larger and obviously much harsher due to the climate and environment.

The Gulag system was extremely complex, and goes far beyond the scope of this blog to do it justice. Therefore, if you’d like to learn more, we highly recommend the following books:

  • The Gulag Archipelago
  • Gulag: A History
  • The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements

Find this post interesting? Please help us by sharing it:

Filed Under: Russia Tagged With: Soviet

Comments

  1. Lee D. Cary says

    November 29, 2019 at 11:38 pm

    How do I order a large map of the Gulag system?

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.


World Atlas · Settlers of Catan · Risk · Game of Thrones · Coloring Books · Globes
Monopoly · Star Wars · Game of Life · Pandemic · Ticket To Ride · Drinks Cabinets
Copyright © 2023 · Privacy Policy · Fair Use, Attribution & Copyright · Contact Us
Follow Us: E-mail · Twitter · Facebook · Pinterest · Flipboard