GULAG, in Russian Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitel'no-Trudovykh Lagerey, meaning Directorate of Correcting Labor Camps, which was controlled by the KGB, the successor of NKVD, Cheka and GPU.

Between 1921 and 1954 nearly 10 000 000 people were kept in labor camps for different (political or criminal) offends as official Russian historians estimate.

An anti-Soviet joke, a nameless denunciation, or sloth was enough to get into a labor camp. Many of the prisoners were sentenced to force labor without trial.

In the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1954 officially 3 778 234 people were sentenced for political reasons, 786 098 of them were executed.

Independent historians say this is an underestimation of the real numbers.

From the territories first freed then occupied by the Red Army, millions of people were taken away to forced labor camps as prisoners of war during and following WW2. Just from Hungary, which had a population of 9 million in 1946, 650 000 people were taken to the Soviet Union, 136 000 of them never returned home.

GULAGs functioned not just as prison camps, their main purpose was to ensure free labor, slaves, for the Soviet economy, mostly in the hardest fields like mining, industrial and infrastructural projects in remote areas etc. Because of forced labor, inadequate purveyance, inhuman circumtances about 10% of the prisoners died in the camps.

Museum "Perm-36"