Knowledge

/

ArcaMax

Today's Word "Gulag"

on

Published in Vocabulary

gulag \GU-lahg\ (noun) - One of the prison camps spread across the Soviet Union from Vladimir, Russia eastward used ostensibly to reeducate criminals, most of whom were political prisoners until the rise of Khrushchev. A particularly harsh prison.

"Jeremy felt that he didn't so much work with a company as he worked at a gulag where he lost all his rights the moment he stepped through the door."

 

Popularized in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" (1973), a historical documentation of many of the prisoners in these camps. After the death of Stalin, Khrushchev released most surviving political prisoners but the Soviet Union continued to use psychiatric wards and internal exile to punish citizens who simply wished to express a contrary opinion of the government. Russian acronym from Glavnoe Upravlenie (ispravitel'no-trudovykh) LAGerei "chief administration of (corrective-labor) camps." For more insight into these camps, read Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or see http://members.aol.com/KatharenaE/private/Alsolz/Gulag.html.


Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus
 

 

Comics

Get Fuzzy The Other Coast Agnes David M. Hitch Drew Sheneman Jimmy Margulies