The first concentration camps were set up as of 1918, a few months after the October Revolution. The new Bolshevik regime wished to rid itself of its political adversaries and use work to re-educate the so-called social misfits. The first wide-scale experiment was that of the Solovetsky Islands.

Thousands of political prisoners and criminals, both men and women, were imprisoned there in inhumane conditions. After the death of Lenin in 1922, Stalin came to power and launched the accelerated industrialisation of the country along with the collectivisation of agriculture, which would lead to deadly famines. Immense building projects were launched in the most remote regions such as Kolyma in Siberia. The GPU, the Communist Party's secret police, which was in charge of cleansing society and ridding it of undesirables, sent hundreds of thousands of Russians to the camps to participate in the establishment of socialism.

Documentary: Gulag, The Story EP1: From experimentation to setting up the forced labour system (1918-1936)
Directed by: Patrick Rotman
Production: KUIV Productions

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