Special warehouse of the MWD

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The special camps of the MWD (Interior Ministry of the USSR, formerly NKVD), which were established in the Soviet Union from February 1948, were special facilities of the Gulag camp system for political prisoners . The term special camp is Russian особый лагерь , or особлаг Ossoblag for short . There were a total of twelve such special camps. After Stalin's death in 1953, they were gradually disbanded or restructured.

designation

In the legal texts that led to the establishment of the special camps, as well as in the work that carried out the evaluation of the history of the camps on the basis of documents from the NKVD, MWD and other authorities of the former Soviet Union dealing with the camps, the The term “special warehouse” (Russian особый лагерь ) is used. In addition, in secondary literature, such as Ralf Stettner or Jacques Rossi , the term “special camp” ( going back to the Russian специальный лагерь ); In one of his works, Siegfried Jenkner speaks of “special camps with a tightened regime, or regime camps for short” and uses the term “regime camps” to refer to the camps for political prisoners established in 1948, but speaks of a total of seventeen camps in another place. To what extent these different terms represent a different translation, an extension of the term “special camp” to other Gulag camps, etc., has not yet been adequately clarified.

Purpose of the special warehouse

The special camps were a special part of the facilities of the general Soviet penal system from 1948 to around the early 1960s, which were geared towards prisoner work and were subject to various, frequently changing main administrations. They should serve to relieve the general gulag camps and to isolate people. They were primarily set up for prisoners who - as was the usage at the time - espionage , decomposition and sabotage , terrorism , and also for Trotskyists , Mensheviks , Social Revolutionaries , "right-wing elements", anarchists , nationalists , White Guards and others - whether their condemnation Facts based or not. These prisoners were generally referred to as “special contingents” by the MWD authorities.

history

The establishment of the special camps in the Soviet Union goes back to the Decree No. 00219 of the Ministry of Interior MWD of February 21, 1948; the financing was also decided here (state budget of the USSR) and the places where the first camps were to be set up were determined; the administrative structure was also decided. The first five special camps (special camps No. 1 to 5) were set up in February 1948, special camp No. 6 in August 1948 and special camp No. 7 in December 1948; from 1949 to 1952 five others were added.

At the same time a decision was made to establish special prisons ( Особые тюрьмы ). They were in Vladimir (prison camp Vladimirovka ) Aleksandrovskoe and Verkhneuralsk built.

The camps were often set up in the immediate vicinity of existing corrective labor camps (ITL) or even on their premises by taking over previous camp departments, but were strictly separated and isolated from them and guarded by special guards. These were regular units of the Ministry for State Security (MGB), i.e. units for internal protection of the state (ВОХР, Войска внутренней охраны республики), which were de facto subordinate to the MGB, the predecessor organization of the KGB . There were often several special camps in a small area. The largest collections of stocks included:

The work regime was extraordinarily ruthless, in the accommodations one calculated 1 square meter per person, about half as in the other camps. Barred windows, a ban on leaving the accommodation and other measures had the character of a strict prison. Administration and supervision was the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior (MWD) (and its various departments), even after 1953, when most of the other Gulag camps, for B. were handed over to the Ministry of Justice. The inmates of the special camps were used for the heaviest work in coal and ore mining, road and railroad construction, logging and other rough work. In the period 1953/1954 there were three major revolts in the special camps: in GorLag (→ uprising of Norilsk ), RetschLag (→ uprising of Vorkuta ) and in StepLag (→ Kengir uprising ).

From the summer of 1954, after Stalin's death and after the uprisings in some camps, the special camps were gradually reduced: they were dissolved or classified and run as the other reformatory and labor camps.

Overview of the special bearings

After February 1948 the following special camps were established:

The camps originally had no names and were only numbered chronologically according to the date of their establishment. It was not until later that they were given different names, which, however, rarely had any relation to reality (there are no lakes in the vicinity of camp no. 7 - OserLag, whose name is derived from "See", "Seelandschaft"). It is believed that in many cases the telegraph codes assigned to the camps were simply adopted. These telegraph codes were assigned from 1949, often as camouflage. The “Special Camp No. 17”, which appears sporadically in the literature, is evidently special camp No. 7 (OserLag).

Occupant Numbers

Originally, the maximum number of prisoners held in special camps was limited to 145,000 by a resolution of the Gulag administration. However, as a commission of the Ministry of the Interior found that as early as 1948 there were about 175,000 prisoners in the general reformatory and labor camps who were to be transferred to the new special camps; in addition, new "contingents" were expected. The limit has therefore been increased.

While there were 106,573 prisoners in the special camps in 1949 (other sources give 197,000 people), there were 185,000 in January 1950, 215,000 in January 1951 and finally 257,000 in January 1952; in February 1953 the number had dropped to 234,000 prisoners. In the following year, the number continued to decline in the course of the liquidation or restructuring of the special camps.

The Russian historian Smykalin provides the following information on the nationality structure of the prisoners (other than Russians) in the Soviet special camps in 1954 on the basis of many documents:

country number country number
Germany 10,542 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia 49
United States 2,836 Austria 40
Japan 1,171 Bulgaria, Yugoslavia 36
Great Britain a) 1,164 Italy 27
China 988 Denmark, Sweden, Norway 18th
Romania 554 Greece 8th
Hungary and Czechoslovakia 303 Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg 7th
Finland 326 Vatican 6th
France 276 Iran, Syria, Egypt, Transjordan b) 5
Poland 202 Spain 4th
Iran b) 182 Latin American countries c) 3
Afghanistan 92
Turkey 87 other 61

Remarks:

a) including British Dominions
b) One day it has to be Iraq instead of Iran
c)Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina etc. a.

In the same publication there is an overview of the distribution of the prisoners according to the reasons for the judgment (without this being further defined - it is based on the CPSU party vocabulary of the time):

Type of offense

Terrorists
Saboteurs
Trotskyists
Right-wing elements
SR
Mensheviks
Anarchists

number

9,595
3,714
1,505
455
197
153
65

Abbreviations used by administrations

Various administrations were responsible for the supervision and management of the special camps. The most important were:

  • GGWDS - Headquarters of the camps for the construction of the Volga-Don Canal
  • GlawLesLag - head office warehouse in forestry
  • GTU - Main Administration of Prisons
  • GUITK - Correctional Colonies Headquarters
  • GULAG - Central Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies
  • GULGMP - Headquarters of bearings in the mining and metallurgical industries
  • GULGTS - Headquarters of hydraulic engineering warehouses
  • GULLP - head office warehouse in forestry
  • GULPS - head office of warehouses for industrial construction
  • GULSchDS - Headquarters of the warehouse for railway construction
  • GUMS - Prison Headquarters
  • GUPR - Headquarters for Forced Labor
  • OITK - Corrective Action Colonies Department
  • UITK - Corrective Action Colonies Administration
  • UITL - Corrective Labor Camp (s) Administration
  • UITLK - Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies Administration

The following abbreviations are also used in this context:

  • ITK - Corrective Work Colony
  • ITL - Corrective Labor Camp
  • KGB - State Security Committee
  • MJu - Ministry of Justice
  • MWD - Ministry of the Interior
  • NKVD - People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs

Remarks

  1. ↑ The following can be said about the use of the term “contingent”: In the language used by the NKVD / MWD, “special contingent” means prisoners of the special camps, i. H. political prisoners who were held in special camps under a tightened (special) regime; The “general contingent” were then the other prisoners of the “general regime” of the other Gulag camps.

literature

  • Michail Borisovič Smirnow (Ed.): The system of corrective labor camps in the Soviet Union 1923-1960. A manual. Translated from the Russ. and arrangement Reinhold Schletzer, Reinhold Schletzer Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-921539-72-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Приказ МВД СССР № 00219 “Об организации особых лагерей МВД” (Ordinance No. 00219 on the organization of special camps of the MWD). Online at: alexanderyakovlev.org/…
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Vladimír Bystrov: Únosy československých občanů do Sovětského Svazu v letech 1945–1955 (kidnapping of Czechoslovak citizens in the Soviet Union 1945–1955). Edition Svědectví , ed. from Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu ÚDV, an institution of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic, Prague 2003, ISBN 80-7312-027-5 , online at: szcpv.org/… , section Osoblag, p. 263.
  3. ↑ a b Structure and structure of the warehouse entries. General structure . Portal MEMORIAL Germany e. V. (Memorial.de), online at: gulag.memorial.de/…
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i MB Smirnow, SP Sigatschew, DW Schkalow: Система мест заключения в СССР 1929–1960 (The prison system in the USSR 1929–1960). In: MB Smirnow (ed.): Система исправительно-трудовых лагерей в СССР (The system of corrective labor camps in the USSR 1923–1960). Zwenja, 1998. Online on the Мемориал portal (Memorial.ru) memo.ru/…
  5. ^ Ralf Stettner: The camp organization of the GULag. In: "Archipel GULag". Stalin's forced camp - a terrorist instrument and economic giant. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1996, ISBN 3-506-78754-3 , p. 197.
  6. ↑ a b c Jacques Rossi: Справочник по ГУЛАГу (Russian translation of The Gulag Handbook , London 1987). Online on the Memorial.krsk portal, memorial.krsk.ru/ , keyword "спецлаг"
  7. ^ Siegfried Jenkner: "The bacillus of freedom migrates across the GULAG archipelago" - strikes and uprisings in Soviet forced labor camps . Documents from the Memorial.de portal, online at: gulag.memorial.de / ...
  8. ↑ Jacques Rossi: Справочник по ГУЛАГу (Russian translation of The Gulag Handbook , London 1987). Online on the Memorial.krsk portal, memorial.krsk.ru/ , keyword "ВОХР"
  9. ↑ Volodymyr Kosyk, Development phases of the concentration camp system in the USSR , communications of the Arbeits- und Förderungsgemeinschaft der Ukrainischen Wissenschaften eV, No. 17, Munich 1980, online at: diasporiana.org.ua / ...
  10. ↑ On MinLag: Dmitri Schkapow : MINERALLAGER , on RetschLag: Dmitri Schkapow : FLUSSLAGER ; both on portal MEMORIAL Deutschland e. V. (Memorial.de), in: Dmitri Schkapow, The system of corrective labor camps in the USSR 1923–1960 , handbook edited by Michail Smirnow, online at: gulag.memorial.de/...242 and gulag.memorial.de /...291
  11. ↑ Sergei Sigatschow, Main Building Administration for the Far East , In: The system of corrective labor camps in the USSR 1923-1960 , online at: gulag.memorial.de (Portal MEMORIAL Deutschland e.V. )
  12. ↑ Comments by the Memorial.ru editorial team, section 4.7. Телеграфный код, online at: www.memo.ru/
  13. ↑ On the uprising of 1953 see in particular: Anne Applebaum: Der Gulag . Translated from the English by Frank Wolf. Siedler Verlag, Berlin, 2003, 721 pages, ISBN 3-88680-642-1 , here in particular pages 491
  14. ↑ a b AS Smykalin: Kolonii i tjurmy v Sovetskoj Rossii . Yekaterinburg 1997, p. 184 (penal colonies and prisons in Soviet Russia). Quoted from: Vladimír Bystrov: Únosy československých občanů do Sovětského Svazu v letech 1945–1955 . Edition Svědectví , ed. from Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu ÚDV, an institution of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic, Prague 2003, ISBN 80-7312-027-5 , online at: szcpv.org/… , p. 264f. (Annotation **)
  15. ↑ Список сокращений. In: MB Smirnow (ed.): Система исправительно-трудовых лагерей в СССР (The system of corrective labor camps in the USSR 1923–1960). Zwenja, 1998. Online on the Мемориал portal (Memorial.ru) memo.ru / ... ; German version on the MEMORIAL Deutschland e. V. [Abbreviations] . Online at: gulag.memorial.de / ...

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