History is truth – echoed through the hallways of time, breathing in the memories of many, living
on in through the shape of present-day society which it has chiseled, the past resonating in the present. History contains the experiences of many, it is our stories – the essence of which make us human. Today we will be going on a journey, back into the Gulag of the Soviet Union, we will allow the prisoners of the Gulag to speak to us, to help us understand their plight.
The GULAG is an acronym in Russian, which when translated into English means “Chief
Administration of Corrective Labour Camps”. The Gulag consisted of a network of hundreds of labour camps and prisons, whose inmates were political prisoners of the Soviet Union from the 1920s until the mid-1950s. These camps can be compared in some ways to the Nazi Concentration Camps of the Second World War. Over the years of the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, these camps housed millions of prisoners, an estimate of 40 – 50 million from 1928 – 1953. Each of the hundreds of camps contained around 2000 – 10 000 prisoners.
These inmates were imprisoned for a wide variety of reasons. Some were true criminals who
were imprisoned for the crimes they had committed, some were completely innocent, the victims of Stalin’s Great Purge (where he got rid of anyone who challenged his dictatorship). Often family members of those who challenged Stalin were also imprisoned. Many individuals were simply picked up by the Secret Police and were imprisoned without any trial or sentencing.
#gulag #history #stalin #sovietgulag #gulagcamp
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Scriptwriter: Natasha Martell – Nadette Koch
Video Editor & Motion Graphics: Naman Meena
Voice-over Artist: Stephen Lewis: stephenvox.com
Music: Motionarray.com
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