Forced Labor at the Lada Plant: How Russia Revives the Gulag System

Forced labor in the Lada factory
How Russia Revives The Gulag System

By Kevin Schulte
8/8/2023 8:07 am

Russia is reviving the most degrading side of the Soviet Union: The Kremlin is arresting thousands of Ukrainians for no reason and putting them in penal colonies to be used either at the front or as forced laborers. Russia is building a new Gulag system.

Anyone who opposes the Putin system in Russia can quickly end up in a prison camp. Like the regime critic Alexej Navalny, who is being held in the Melekhovo penal colony about 260 kilometers from Moscow. Just like many other people who criticize the war against Ukraine. Shortly after the invasion of the neighboring country, the Russian parliament decided that anti-war rhetoric could be punished with up to 15 years in prison. The risk of being sent to a prison camp is greater than ever under Putin.

But that no longer only applies to Russians. The Kremlin has also, or primarily, targeted Ukrainians. Arrests are a sad part of everyday life in the Russian-held areas of Ukraine and may be part of a long-term plan. Russia is currently building a new Gulag system, writes about this US magazine “The Atlantic”. The arrests, torture and murders of Ukrainians have long been “not just ad hoc reactions to the Ukrainian resistance”.

“Older than Communism”

The Gulag is one of the darkest chapters in Russian history. Over the decades, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin built up a notorious system of labor camps, penal colonies and special prisons. “The gulag is older than communism. This type of penal camp already existed in the tsarist empire. What we understand by the gulag is then more of a system of millions of forced labor, as it was established under Stalin,” say historians like Jan Claas Behrends .

At the peak of the Gulag between 1928 and 1956, around 20 million people were sent to the camps and used as slave labor. On average, a little more than one in ten did not make it out of the labor camp alive, because most prisoners were sent directly to the Gulag for 10 or even 25 years. And those who survived the inhumane conditions suffered from physical and mental scars that were just as bad.

Arrests for trivialities

A good 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the system of cruel camps is apparently to be rebuilt. A report of Associated Press suggests that Russia has long since started doing this. The American news agency has evaluated statements by former prisoners and information from two human rights organizations and created a map showing at least 40 prison camps in Russia and Belarus as well as 63 “formal and informal” prisons in the occupied part of Ukraine.

Also, earlier this year, the AP became a Russian government document leaked, which shows plans for a total of 25 new prison colonies and six other prisons on the territory of occupied Ukraine by 2026.

Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin decided in May that Russian authorities could deport people from areas under martial law to areas without martial law. In plain language, this means that Russia authorizes itself to deport residents of the occupied territories in Ukraine from their own country and to send them to labor camps in Russia for an indefinite period of time.

The new camp system works similar to the 20th century gulag. People are arrested for trifles – for example, if they speak the Ukrainian language; or even completely without a reason, because they live in a Russian-occupied region and do not want to submit to the occupiers. In fact, the people in Russian captivity no longer have any rights, relatives are not informed and they do not get any court proceedings.

Torture nine times out of ten

Whether in Russia or in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine, the conditions in the penal colonies are the same everywhere. Abuse is the order of the day. “Electric shocks, simulated asphyxiation, and punches that fracture skulls and ribs,” AP summarizes. The United Nations writes in a June report that 91 percent of prisoners report torture and ill-treatment.

The prisoners often have to work as slaves. For example at the front, where they dig trenches. Many prisoners are forced to sign their mobilization papers – and have to fight on their own soil against their homeland. “As before, it seems that the Russian prison directors are given quotas. That means they have to hand over a certain number of prisoners to the front,” reports The Atlantic.

However, Russia can obviously also use forced laborers for non-military purposes, as the case of Avtova shows. The largest carmaker in Russia is best known for the Lada and wants to ramp up production in the next few months to boost the economy – and also put forced laborers on the conveyor belt, reports the Russian news agency Interfax. According to the report, Avtovas will initially need 1,100 additional workers, and another 3,000 by January. Half will be forced labourers, writes the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Samara region, where Avtovas is headquartered – officially on its website.