Gulag
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The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word Gulag originally referred only to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era. The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное Управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х ЛАГере́й", but the full official name of the agency changed several times.
A punishment cell block in one of the subcamps of Vorkutlag, 1945
Genrikh Yagoda (middle) inspecting the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, 1935. Behind his right shoulder is a young Nikita Khrushchev.
The fence at the old Gulag camp in Perm-36, founded in 1943, turned into a museum. Many Ukrainian nationalists were repressed and held at this camp.
Central shop in Norilsk built by prisoners of the Norillag
Cheka
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The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, abbreviated as VChK, and commonly known as Cheka, was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations known for conducting the Red Terror. Established on December 5 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Bolshevik revolutionary Felix Dzerzhinsky. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the Russian SFSR at all levels.
Members of the presidium of VCheKa (left to right) Yakov Peters, Józef Unszlicht, Abram Belenky (standing), Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, 1921
Smolny, the seat of the Soviet government, 1917
Grigory Petrovsky
Felix Dzerzhinsky in a meeting among other members of the Presidium of the Cheka, 1919