From 1929 to 1953, Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union in Russia. Stalin wanted to industrialize Russia so he developed five-year plans to help with the process. The plans caused rapid industrialization for oil, steel, and coal productivity and a booming economy for Russia. The plans were enforced strictly in the factories and anyone who didn’t do as was instructed was persecuted or executed as an enemy of Russia. Although Stalin’s plans for industrialization were successful, many people suffered at the expense of it.
Collectivisation
Stalin started collectivisation in Russia which led to famines in 1929. Collectivisation is the grouping together of all farming under the government. Millions of farmers were opposed to this and …show more content…
The largest camps were in the northern part of Siberia which has extreme weather conditions. There were extremely high death rates in these camps due to many factors including the frigid cold, poor sanitation, hard labor, etc. Prisoners often worked 14 hours a day doing physically exhausting work. Work could be anything from cutting down trees to mining. The White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal was the first large construction done by the prisoners of the gulag. The one hundred forty-one mile long canal took only twenty months. Originally this was a great achievement but it was soon proved impractical since it was too shallow and too narrow for most ships. Over one-hundred thousand prisoners worked on the canal and many died in the construction of it.
Women had it very hard in the gulag. Not only did the women in the camps have to worry about doing the work they were required to do, but they also had to be afraid of being attacked by one of the men. Quite often, male camp employees, guards, and even other prisoners raped and abused the women. If a woman was pregnant, she still had to do the strenuous labor as the other prisoners. When she gave birth to her child, the Gulag officials would take the baby and place him/her in a special orphanage. The mother would never see her child again and would never be able to find their children after leaving the