The phenomenon of the Gulag. Interpretations, comparisons, historical context. Khili D., Alexopulos G., David-Fox M.

This collective work contains studies of American and European scientists dedicated to Gulag as a complex and diverse phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the famous image of the archipelago as a discrete unity, divorced from the common life of the country and society. The gulag is considered as part of the general -Soviet system of compulsory labor, where there is no clear border between the labor “free” and forced. The camps performed not only the political and penitentiary, but also the economic function, played an important role in the Stalinist program of modernization of the country, and forcibly attracting labor, qualified designers, outstanding scientists in force.

In certain chapters, the Gulag phenomenon is sequentially compared with other similar systems that existed in different countries in different eras: with British camps in colonial India and Africa, with Siberian links of tsarist times, with labor camps in China and North Korea. As a result, the gulag appears not only as a specifically Soviet phenomenon, but also as part of a more general trend of international scale.