The Gulag at War: Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives. by Edwin
Bacon
Review by: Stephen Kotkin
Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 169-170
Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
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FeaturedReviews
169
deserve high praise forthe standardsof comprehensivenessand detail thattheyattain
in describingthe holdings of a major archive.
RICHARD WORTMAN
ColumbiaUniversity
The Gulag at War: Stalin'sForcedLabour Systemin theLightof theArchives.By Edwin
Bacon. New York: New York UniversityPress, 1994. xii, 190 pp. Index. Tables.
$32.50, hard bound.
Edwin Bacon's compact volume does not purportto be a historyof the gulag; nor can
it be taken for a historyof the gulag at war, despite its title.Rather,it representsa
kind of surgical strike on formerlysecret archives,carried out under the noxious
influenceof the scholarlysquabble on the gulag's size.
Bacon has read the numerous articles in the Russian periodical press as well as
published and unpublished document compilations based in part on the recently
declassifiedrecords of the centralgulag administration(GARF,fond9414). He has also
consulted this lattercollection himselfand notes that the gulag materialsare "vast,"
yetadds withoutexplanation that"only a small portionhas contributedto the present
work." True enough: of the approximately110 endnotes in his book containing a
named archival file,75 referto only 2 dela and another 9 to the explanatorypreface
accompanying the archival findingaid. Some 10 differentnamed archival dela are
cited altogether,mostlytop secretreportsassembled by the gulag centraladministration for theirsuperiors at the NKVD/MVD and the partyleadership, as well as some
lecture materialsprepared for the gulag chief.These are choice documents and the
author uses themjudiciously; but, given the extentof this archive alone, the narrowness of his source base is, well, disheartening.
On the matterof the questions Bacon bringsto the documents,he has organized
the firstbook in English on the gulag to use archives primarilyaround the problem
of the total quantityof convicts.In a chapterentitled"Gulag Studies" (sic) he presents
dispassionatelythe dismal numbers debate among Rosefielde,Wheatcroft,Conquest,
Gettyand others,arguing logically that it is a matterto be settled by the archives.
Under the heading "New Revelations" Bacon then recounts the prisoner totals reported in the Russian-languagepress since 1989, showingthat,althoughtheyeach rely
on archives,theyare not in agreement,in some cases have been revised and generally
sufferfromserious misunderstandingsof gulag terminologyas well as what he charitablycharacterizesas "a lack of depth in analysis."In short,he will provide reliable
totals,at least for the war years.
Bacon followshis discussion of "historiography"and the framingof his inquiry
with a 2-chapteraccount of the formationand administrativestructureof the gulag,
a storyto which materialsfromthe formerlysecret archivesare said to add littleand
with which Solzhenitsyn'saccount, writtenentirelywithoutarchives,is held to "coincide well" (47). No effortis made to illustratethe general picture with even a suas a case study
perficialsketchof the formationand operation of a single camp-system
or to demonstratethe strikingdifferencesamong camp-systemslocated in different
regions and national republics,despite the riches on the panoply of gulag's far-flung
empire contained in the group of sources Bacon consulted. Still, he manages to illuminate how the data can be easily misconstrued,given the diversityin the formsof
punishment-camps, colonies, labor settlements,prisons, forced labor withoutconfinement,etc.-whose relativeproportionschanged over time.
The section on formationand structureout of the way,Bacon proceeds to his
central chapter,entitled "How Many Prisoners?"which climaxes with an alarmingly
precise one-page table covering 1942-45, valuable informationthatmighthave been
presented with less buildup. Anyway,if not the exact figures,at least the orders of
170
SlavicReview
magnitude of the data taken fromthe gulag administrationare more or less credible
(notwithstanding
the confusionand sploshnaiatukhtaon convicttotalsin regional gulag
archives overlooked here), yet only a true idealist could presume thatBacon has exorcised the numbers demon. More to the point, having carefullyput forththe data,
he observes that "the archives do not answer all our questions." Few readers would
disagree or be able to resistthe banal admonition that often the greatestlimitations
archives for staarise from the questions posed. Look throughat-long-last-accessible
tisticson convicttotals and that'swhat you'll find.
Nowhere in the book is there an attemptto assess the historicalsignificanceof
the subject,since Bacon apparentlyassumes thatits meaning is self-evident-i.e.,that
the gulag embodied an evil political systemnow justlyoverthrown.This apparent allpurpose assumptionallows Bacon to omit,among othermatters,any discussion of the
differencebetween political and non-politicalconvicts.Of course, it is not necessary
to apologize for the gulag or the Soviet penal code to note thata verysizable contingent of convictswere not 58ers (politicals) but thieves,drunkards,rapists and murderers-that is, people who in all countries are at least temporarilyisolated in some
fashionfromthe rest of society.
While enumeratingthe millions of political prisonersand deportees, it is surely
worthmentioningwhetherthe USSR had a relativelyhigh or low common crime rate,
and whethersentencesfornon-politicalcrimeswere longer or shorterthan elsewhere.
Were the methodsof gulag unique or have othercountriesexperimentedwithreforming characterthroughlabor and withthe economic exploitationof convicts?Were the
USSR's ex-convictsintegratedback into society?Upon release did theyadopt to some
extentthe officialnorms or did theymostlytransferthe values and experience of the
werethe cultures,economies and societies
gulag to the outside?Anyway,how different
of gulag sites from non-gulag ones? For officials,were gulag careers differentfrom
careers in, say,the trade union or partybureaucracy?What kinds of officialswentinto
the gulag and did theygo willingly?Did some tryand perhaps manage to transferto
non-gulagpositions?Above all, whatwas the role of the gulag both in supportingand
in underminingSoviet socialism?Many more questions not addressed in Bacon's study
could be adduced.
To be sure,thereare momentsin Bacon's book when the gulag during 1941-1945
does come alive, so to speak. In three of the eight chapters (sandwiched around the
numbers discussion), Bacon chronicles the dramatic upheaval followingthe nazi invasion and capture of substantialterritoriesthatformerlyheld labor camps; the desperate wartimefood situationthatgulag officialscomplained thwartedtheirabilityto
reorganize for the war effort;the uprising in the Vorkuta camp complex in January
1942 that required the use of air power to put down and that representedonly the
most extremeexample of a growingsecurityproblem; the precipitouswartimedrop
in the gulag population that occurred in part because of starvationas well as the
"release" of nearly a million convicts to army battalions; and the gulag's renewed
expansion beginning in 1944, including the takeoverand use by the NKVD of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen (rightdown to the same stripeduniforms)to iicarcerate
German and Soviet citizens.Here one begins to get a sense of the social historyof the
gulag and the feelingof a missed opportunitybecomes thatmuch more acute.
In conclusion, Bacon convincinglyshows that the contributionof gulag convicts
to the defeat of the nazis was substantial,especially in the production of munitions
but also at the front.Yet he also points out, withoutcommentary,that"the defensive
and offensiveSoviet operations around Stalingrad between 17 July1942 and 2 February1943 put out of action, either temporarilyor permanently,more men than the
Gulag contributedto theRed Armyduringthewar." How muchlongerwillthe massive
gulag,withall its horrorsand paradoxes, continue to be treatedas entirelyapart from
therestof Soviet societyand at thesame timeas thedefininginstitutionand experience
of the USSR?
STrEPHEN
KOTKIN
PrincetonUniversity