Rapid Industrialization and Slave Labor: The Economics of the Soviet Gulag, 1928-1940

Authors

Jeffrey S. Hardy, Brigham Young University

Keywords

Soviet Gulag, economics, industrialization, forced labor

Abstract

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's epic work The Gulag Archipelago opened Western eyes to the unfathomable horror endured by millions of people in the forced-labor camps of the Soviet Union. Since then, countless books, articles, memoirs, etc., have been devoted to explaining the origins of the Gulag, the lives of convicts within this prison system, and the number of people who perished as a result of it. This last aspect in recent years has drawn a disproportionate amount of discussion within the scholarly (and nonscholarly) community, as if an exact number is necessary to compare Joseph Stalin with other brutal dictators, or to memorialize those who died. Other facets of the Gulag, such as ethnicity and gender, have remained relatively unstudied. Another angle recently overlooked by historians is the economy of the Gulag; it seems that many scholars have ignored the Gulag's contribution to the Soviet economy to safeguard themselves from being accused of trivializing the millions of individuals who were worked to death by Stalin's minions. But to understand the development and persistence of the Gulag, as well as its role in the Soviet industrialization of the 1930s, such a study is necessary. As Steven Rosefielde accurately asserted in 1981, "Soviet economic development cannot be properly understood unless forced labour is endogenized into the growth process."

Recommended Citation

Hardy, Jeffrey S. (2005) "Rapid Industrialization and Slave Labor: The Economics of the Soviet Gulag, 1928-1940," The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol. 34: Iss. 1, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol34/iss1/5