00:00Gulag, an abbreviation for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps in English,
00:05was a system of legalized slavery in the USSR.
00:09Before the 1960s, when the rich mineral deposits were found in Soviet territory,
00:14the country was in desperate need of resources for development,
00:18and the government began to extract them from the unpaid labor of prisoners.
00:29The Soviet government did the same thing that the Vikings did a thousand years ago.
00:35The Vikings sailed to the Slavs' land not so much to rob,
00:39there was very little to take away from the forest dwellers,
00:42but to capture prisoners and sell them at the slave markets of Byzantium.
00:48Something similar happened in the USSR.
00:51From the late 1920s to the late 1950s,
00:54the Soviet political police was engaged in several military campaigns against its own population.
01:01Some of the prisoners were killed,
01:03but the vast majority of the arrested were handed over to the Gulag.
01:07Millions of Soviet slaves built factories and power stations,
01:12worked in mines and did water logging,
01:15and that was how the Soviet superpower was built.
01:23The political police could arrest anyone for anything.
01:27And the fear of this huge and incomprehensible machine was the reason behind the mass false denunciations.
01:35Please, take my neighbor, not me.
01:38See, I am vigilant and loyal, and I am ready to do anything for the sake of the party and
01:44the government.
01:45People were eager to join the harassment of the appointed enemy,
01:49so that the system would consider them as loyalists and wouldn't touch them.
01:54It was like the fight for a life jacket on the sinking ship, every man for himself.
02:01But it was impossible to be safe from Gulag, even for members of the Soviet government.
02:13During World War II, my husband's great grandfather, Pavel Sholokhov, served in the Air Defense Forces in besieged Leningrad.
02:22He was arrested in 1945.
02:25Someone reported him to the political police after Pavel commanded on a Soviet newspaper.
02:30They write a lot, but little is true.
02:34Pavel was an expert sheet metal worker, so he was sent to a special laboratory at the Prison Research Institute,
02:42where he worked for eight years.
02:45After Stalin's death, he was released, but his health was so poor that he died one year later.
02:57My grandfather, Nikolai Baryakin, was the head of the local department against misappropriation of socialist property in Urimitz,
03:06a small town by the Volga River.
03:08In 1948, he received a report that someone had stolen several bags of flour from the state mill,
03:16but for some reason he did not start an investigation.
03:19As a result, Nikolai was arrested, expelled from the Communist Party,
03:25and sentenced to five years of hard labor.
03:28But when he arrived at the camp, he became not a regular prisoner,
03:33but an armed guard, because he used to be a law enforcement officer.
03:39This was one of the most striking features of the Gulag.
03:44Prisoners were guarded by other prisoners.
03:48The guards got a better chance of survival, and therefore they did everything possible to continue in that capacity and
03:56run the Gulag system smoothly.
03:58If you were in a camp in the Arctic or in Siberia, the rules of the game were very simple.
04:04If you had a guard's sheepskin coat, you would survive the winter, and if not, you could only pray not
04:11to get frostbite.
04:13Without vitamin C in your food, you might get scurvy unless you get special rations reserved for guards.
04:20Moreover, if you were a guard, you could regularly write home and receive letters from your beloved ones.
04:33I have no idea what Nikolai was doing while he was in the camp.
04:37But I have his letters to his wife Diana.
04:40There is nothing about his camp life.
04:43The censors made sure that guards never described anything specific.
04:48So it looked as though Nikolai was not a prisoner guard, but some kind of polar explorer.
04:55My dear Diana, I am still waiting for a letter from you.
05:00I can't restrain myself from talking to you.
05:03Let it be on paper.
05:05If you'd only know how much I worry about you and your well-being.
05:10Diana, sweetheart, do you still love me?
05:13Please forgive me for this question and don't take offense.
05:16Those doubtful thoughts disturb my mind only because I am so crazy about you.
05:22I am still alive and well in the same old place.
05:27It's autumn here.
05:28Only half a month ago we didn't have any nights at all.
05:31And the sun was shining all the time.
05:34And now everything is gone like a dream.
05:37And there is only the feathers of the winter waiting for us in the future.
05:41Now, I don't do patrolling anymore.
05:44And I got some writing job here in the office.
05:47I wish I could do it during the whole winter like last year.
05:51But I'll be alright anyway.
05:53Don't worry about me and take care of yourself.
05:56I send you a thousand kisses, my dearest wife.
06:00Yours truly, Nikolai.
06:02Instead of five years, my grandfather spent three and a half years in the camp.
06:08And nobody knows why he was released on parole.
06:12Subsequently, he was reinstated in the party and was appointed as director of the woodworking factory.
06:18But he, too, died early, at the age of 60, even though he didn't drink or smoke.
06:30Surprisingly, I learned about the existence of the Gulag only after the collapse of the USSR.
06:35The adults told us children nothing about Grandfather Nikolai's camp experience.
06:41The same happened in other families.
06:44People just disappeared.
06:46Some forever and some for several years.
06:48And if they returned home, they were completely exhausted both physically and morally.
06:54And everybody, including themselves, pretended that nothing had happened.
06:59It was much easier to rebuild your life that way.
07:08Of course, mass repressions made a huge impact on Soviet society.
07:12Millions of prisoners returning home brought thieves' jargon with them, the language they had spoken in camps.
07:19For many, it became a common form of communication, especially in the workers' neighborhoods.
07:25The gypsy romance songs that were very popular in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century made way to
07:32criminal songs, the so-called Russian chanson.
07:36And the beliefs of the labor camps are now deeply rooted in Russian society.
07:42Don't stick your head out if you don't want to lose it.
07:46Don't expect and certainly don't demand anything from your superiors.
07:52If you can't cheat the system, do it.
07:54Laws are just a suggestion.
07:56Try to join the strongest pack.
07:59Try to get a good position in the system and milk it dry while you can.
08:05The highest authorities are good.
08:08Sometimes they make a call and punish the local bosses who are thieves, murderers and traitors without exception.
08:16Do not trust anyone except your family and closest friends.
08:20If a stranger tries to be good to you, he surely wants to rip you off.
08:25Take advantage of a stupid stranger who's just asking to be tricked.
08:30Stealing from the state is not a crime, but a smart way to do business.
08:36The world is ruled by force and goodwill doesn't exist, especially to strangers.
08:48There is no such word like community in Russian language and there is no such a phenomenon,
08:53since upshinas, the rural communities, were destroyed during Stalin's era.
08:59Extreme disunity and lack of faith in joint actions is a result of a massive subconscious trauma of betrayal caused
09:07by the gulag system.
09:08The Soviet state promised its citizens to build communism by the 1980s.
09:15But it turned out that all the time it was not building a happy society of the future,
09:21but reproducing the system more suitable for the early middle ages.
09:27The builders of the future got the wrong blueprints.
09:31And due to lack of education, they couldn't figure it out in time.
09:35My name is Elvira Berry. I am an author.
09:37And if you believe that the story of the gulag should be remembered, give this video a thumbs up.
09:43was that the rusians said to me that the dites.
09:48had made some votes in телефон because of the bouldering from theedy and theulate is a result of theчеществ.
09:48However, some of the pressure of the ships addicted to the heat,
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