Gulag: The Story

Peak & Death 1945 – 1957 (1x3)

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The populations of the newly occupied eastern territories remain suspected of anti-Sovietism. The third category targeted is that of intellectuals, in particular within an expanding Soviet student population. Women, including many war widows sentenced to heavy penalties for petty pilfering, now represent a quarter of the zeks. Nearly 2 million detainees, many of them at the extreme limit of survival, are still crammed into the camps. Little by little, these appalling living conditions bring down the economic profitability of the Gulag. On March 5, 1953, after the death of Stalin, a million releases are pronounced. In 1956, Khrushchev, exonerating himself from his responsibility, denounces the crimes of Stalinism, causing a huge shock wave in the world. The concentration camp system does not disappear completely, but will never again regain the scale of its past forty years of mass repression.