Gulag: The Story

Propagation 1934 – 1945 (1x2)

Air date: Feb 11, 2020

In 1934, Stalin launched the works of the Volga-Moscow canal and the construction of a new Trans-Siberian railway. The NKVD multiplies the camps and transforms the Gulag into a real prison industry. The number of deportees crosses the million mark in 1935. A spectacular showcase of the great terror unleashed in 1937, the Moscow trials concealed the extent of the repression which was now in full bloom across all levelsl of Soviet society. Mass executions and arbitrary arrests are accelerating. In August 1939, after the signing of the German-Soviet pact, hundreds of thousands of Poles, Baltics, West Ukrainians and Moldavians join some 2 million Soviet deportees in the Gulag camps. . Famine and disease ravage the ranks of the detainees as Hitler invades Russia. In 1945, despite the victory over Nazi Germany, the Gulag archipelago, an essential engine of the Soviet production machine, begin to expand again.