Padture,+Siddharth

Sidd Padture 1964 words

Research Question: To what extent did the GULAG system effect the Soviet economy.

Section A: Plan of Investigation-134 words The purpose of this investigation is to determine the extent to which the Soviet GULAG system during the Stalinist era affected the Soviet economy. The main part of the investigation will survey the economic impact of the GULAG system on the USSR with respect to the rapid rate of industrialization of the USSR and the state of the Soviet economy at the beginning of the Stalinist era. My investigation will be primarily driven by two sources, // Gulag // by Anne Applebaum and // The Economy of the OGPU, NKVD and MVD of the USSR, 1930-1953 // by Oleg Khlevnyuk. These sources will be analyzed for their origin, purpose, values and limitations. From these sources and other evidence a conclusion will be drawn as to the economic benefit of the GULAG forced labor system on the Soviet economy.

Section B: Summary of Evidence-577 words The GULAG System in the Stalinist era Soviet Union was a system of forced labor camps and projects that extended throughout the Soviet Union. The system was fueled by the vast number of political criminals and social undesirables that were imprisoned by the Soviet Union during Stalin’s rein (Applebaum). The origins of the GULAG system lie in the push to industrialize the backward Soviet Union. The policy of industrialization ran parallel to both the policy of collectivization of peasant farms, leaving millions of // kulaks // (rich peasants) landless and easily arrested and forced to work, and the policy of mass political arrests among ordinary Soviet citizens(Bacon). These two factors provided an immense imprisoned population that was almost immediately sent to work. The number of prisoners in the system has been, and is still, hotly contested with credible estimates ranging from fifteen to eighteen million prisoners over the 30 years it was widely active (Bacon). This massive amount of readily available labor was an assumed part of the Five Year Plans, without the use of forced labor the production targets set by the politburo would be impossible to achieve (Khlevnyuk). The extremely rapid rise of the GULAG population mirrors the rapid industrialization the Soviet Union went through following Stalin’s rise to power. The task of bringing an essentially agricultural nation on level with the rest of the industrialized world in ten years was monumental and the GULAG system provided both the labor for projects and the raw materials from Siberian mining and logging camps. The massive amount of labor was responsible for the construction of two major projects, the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Moskva-Vogal Canal in a record time of two years. With over a 100,000 inmates working on each canal they were completed rapidly but not very efficiently with regards to planning and resource consumption (Khlevnyuk). Both of these canals were meant to increase trade in the commercial center of the country St. Petersburg and Moscow (Bacon). However the White Sea-Baltic Canal has been viewed as a failure in economic terms as the amount of money and resources poured into it during the Five Year Plan periods vastly outstripped any possible benefit it provided (Bacon). Across Russia more than 150,000 worked on the construction Baikal-Amur Railroad in the Far East (BAM) which ran the length of the Soviet Union and proved a key asset in moving resources and people for the rest of the century (Khlevnyuk). The construction of the BAM opened up the possibility of large labour camps in Siberia. Prior to the railroad there were about 49,000 men working in Siberia. After the railroad the number increased to about 163,000 as it became easy to ship raw materials around the country (Applebaum). The GULAG system also had a great effect on the war effort during World War II. Prior to the war the Politburo quickly ordered the construction of numerous military factories as it began arming for the inevitable conflict with Germany. In addition to the massive rapid buildup of munitions the GULAG system provided a source of easy manpower for the red army throughout the war, over 420,000 inmates were turned over to the army to bolster the ranks (Khlevnyuk). This, however, overworked remaining prisoners and the mortality in the gulags reached an all time high. These two factors dramatically reduced the GULAG population and thus its economic benefit. The post-war system never again reached the heights of productivity achieved in the 1930s and 40s.(Khlevnyuk).

Section C: Evaluation of Sources-293 words ** Khlevnyuk, Oleg (2003), “__The economy of the OGPU, NKVD, and MVD of the__  **__ ** USSR, 1930-1953: the scale, structure and trends of development ** __**  ”,  ** ** 43-66 in: Paul R Gregory and Valery Lazarev (eds.), The Economics of Forced Labor: the Soviet Gulag, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution. ** The origin of this source is an essay in a compendium on the economics of forced labor. It was written by a senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation. It was published in 2003. The purpose of the text is to provide and overview of the GULAG economy during the time that it was most active(1930-1955). The value of the text is that it provides a meticulously researched and well justified analysis of the progression of the GULAG economy over the 23 years it covers. The text frequently references Soviet reports and provides reliable numbers for different work details and production levels. The main limitation of this source is it’s narrow scope, focusing entirely on the GULAG system and not analyzing the rest of the Soviet economy to any great extent.

** Applebaum, Anne. ** ** __Gulag: A History__. N.p.: Random, 2003. Print. ** The origin of this source is a book by the American author Anne Applebaum. The purpose of the book is to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire GULAG system from the first to last camp. The value of this source is that it provided an in depth overview of the whole history of the GULAG system encompassing all aspects of it. The primary economic analyses are also well related to the general Soviet economy. The limitations of this source is that is heavily reliant on firsthand accounts to determine facts about different projects as well as the official Soviet work reports which were often heavily doctored.

Section D: Analysis-835 words The question of the GULAG system’s impact on the Soviet economy is complicated by three main issues; the obvious benefit and obvious detriment of some GULAG constructed projects, the difficulty comparing a prisoner’s economic value before and after incarceration, and the general inaccuracy of Soviet economic reports. The issues caused by the gap in economic effectiveness between different projects can be largely mitigated because of the overwhelming benefits provided by most of the projects enacted under the GULAG system. Some of the projects that GULAG system was responsible for were failures economically. For example the White Sea-Baltic Canal was far more expensive than any benefit derived from increased sea trade in the area (Bacon). On the other end of the spectrum projects such as the Bam and the resulting Siberian labor camps were a resounding success, providing reliable shipping and raw materials across the whole Soviet Union (Khlevnyuk). Comparatively only a few of the massive projects that GULAG inmates embarked on were failure economically. These projects tended to be well publicized, like the Canal, and are therefore are prominent in historical memory (Khlevnyuk). However, the vast majority GULAG workers did not work on large projects at all. In total there were approximately 13 million inmates of the GULAG system (Applebaum), of these workers, barely a quarter million worked on what would be considered large projects (Khlenyuk). Taking these, and the roughly half million inmates sent to the army during World War II, that leaves about twelve million inmates toiling productive and economically sound projects such as manufacturing, mining, logging and farming. The problem of individual economic impact pre and post incarceration is more difficult to resolve. GULAG inmates came from every walk of life, from honest factory workers to high-ranking party officials to murderers and thieves (Bacon). It is impossible to assess the demographics of the prisoners as most were listed by their crime and name, nothing else. This makes correlating the economic value of a prisoner with a non-prisoner impossible. Even firsthand accounts of prisoner demographics from inside GULAG prisons vary wildly depending on the account (Applebaum). The impossibility of comparing an inmates pre and post incarceration economic productivity precludes the possibility of analyzing the GULAG system based on a personal level. However, one aspect that the system undeniably had on all of its inmates on a personal production level is that the system allowed for a massive increase in control over workers. This makes the construction of entirely new industrial cities and of other construction projects in deserted areas, that were common in both five-year plans, possible (Khlevnyuk). The ability of a central authority to directly control the lives of a great number of people with extreme accuracy and a high level of enforcement certainly increased the average economic impact of individual workers in the GULAG system over the economic impact of the workers prior to their incarceration. The problems arising from the inaccurate reports of economic data coming from the Soviet Union are largely unsolvable. The problem is compounded on several levels. First the reports of the GULAG prisoners themselves were often entirely inaccurate, altered so the prisoner could receive the extra food required to stay alive. This is best illustrated in Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s firsthand accounts of both prisoners and supervisors meddling with their quota reports and then passing the mistakes off onto other groups or creating airtight excuses to remove blame (Solzhenitsyn). The next level of inaccuracy comes from the administrators of the various GULAG projects, camps and districts. It was in the administrator’s best interest for the production areas under his command to perform at or above the expected level. This, combined with a general lack of oversight over actual production (Nove), lead to a massive incentive to misrepresent productivity. The final level of inaccuracy comes from the official Soviet economic records themselves. The records contain a great deal of positive bias towards the Soviet Union, largely because these records were available to western nation and therefore it was considered advantageous to skew these reports to make the Soviet union appear stronger (Nove). The problems with the Soviet reports can be mitigated by ignoring them altogether and looking at other indicators for evidence of advancement during the GULAG period. It is undeniable that the Soviet economy improved vastly during the Stalinist era. Simple examples can be found easily, the amount of industrial throughput needed to fight, sustain, and win World War II belies a massive manufacturing base that simply did not exist during World War I (Nove). The reports of the existence of GULAG manufacturing facilities and raw material acquisition sites were rarely if ever falsified, so the evidence of a massive increase in manufacturing facilities and mines is valid (Khlevnyuk). The increase of manufacturing and economic capacity, correlated along with the evidence of increased throughput from World War II and the industrialization of the Soviet Union during the GULAG era is compelling evidence to support the official claim that the economic output of the Soviet Union increased during that time period.

Section E: Conclusion Although in some cases the evidence can be ambiguous most of my analysis indicates that the GULAG system had a positive economic impact on the Soviet Union during the 1930-1953 period. The vast number of workers working on basic industrial projects combined with the massive increase in size of a directly controlled work force correlated with the rapid industrialization that occurred along with the rise of the GULAG system would seem to indicate that the GULAG system had a positive economic effect.

Section F: Works Cited Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. N.p.: Random, 2003. Print. Bacon, Edwin. “Gulag.” Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale, 2005. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. . Khlevnyuk, Oleg (2003), “__The economy of the OGPU, NKVD, and MVD of the USSR, 1930-1953: the scale, structure and trends of development__”, 43-66 in: Paul R Gregory and Valery Lazarev (eds.), The Economics of Forced Labor: the Soviet Gulag, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution. Nove, Alec. An Economic History of the Soviet Union. 3rd ed. London: Penguin, 1990. Print. Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr. Gulag Archipelago. Trans. Thomas P. Whitney. Paris: Harper, 1968. Print.