Concentration Camps of the 1920s

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Concentration Camps of the 1920s

Concentration camps were sites of enforced isolation where the Soviet regime sentenced citizens who were considered politically and socially dangerous or undesirable. Unlike prisons, concentration camps were initially designed to function as temporary sites of imprisonment where people were sent on special orders. In most cases, concentration camp prisoners were also sentenced to forced labor.

The first Soviet concentration camps were founded at the beginning of the Civil War. At first the Cheka (Chrezvychaynaya komissiya, Emergency Committee) was responsible for organizing the establishment and management of concentration camps, but gradually the NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) and the Head Department of the Sites of Imprisonment (GUMZ, Glavnoye upravleniye mestami zaklyucheniya) assumed control.

Novospasskii correctional labor home

During the First World War, a network of prisoner-of-war camps was extended across the Russian Empire, especially in Western Siberia. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, foreign prisoners were exchanged for Russian citizens, which created space for new prisoners in the camps.

By 1918–1919, the Soviet regime had established about 15 concentration camps in Moscow where POWs of the Soviet-Polish War (1919–1921) were imprisoned. Among them were Whites, deserters, hostages, foreign citizens who supported the White movement and whom the Soviet government planned to exchange for their own supporters, participants in anti-Soviet uprisings, counterrevolutionaries, vagrants, prostitutes, and cocaine addicts. Concentration camps were often located on the grounds of Moscow’s closed monasteries, large estates, and pre-revolutionary factories.

According to the sources, somewhere between 4,700 to 6,000 people were imprisoned in concentration camps under the control of the Moscow Directorate of Forced Labor in 1921. Staff and even commandants of the camps hardly possessed greater privileges than prisoners. In cases of misdemeanors, the camp commandant himself could be arrested for some time.

Council of People’s Commissars, Resolution on Red Terror. September 5, 1918. Photo: Memorial Photo Archive.

Council of People’s Commissars, Resolution on Red Terror. September 5, 1918. Photo: Memorial Photo Archive.

 

In 1922, Prinkust, a network of forced labor enterprises administered by the Moscow Directorate of Forced Labor, was established. During 1922–1923 almost all concentration camps in Moscow were closed. In 1923, political prisoners were sent to the Northern Camp of Special Purpose (SLON, Severnyye lagerya osobogo naznacheniya) and subsequently to the Solovetskii concentration camp.

The authorities of the Cheka, people’s courts, and revolutionary tribunals were responsible for sentencing people to Moscow's concentration camps. It was often the case that sentences were meant to last “until the end of the Civil War.” Re-examinations of concentration camp cases occurred until the end of the Civil War.