It's 1947.

We're somewhere near Igara within the

Arctic Circle. Alexander Snowski is

wondering just how much more of all this

he can take. He's here to build a

railway. That's what he's been told. And

with this railway, he and his fellow

prisoners will repay their debt to

society. But it doesn't feel like

building a railway. Instead, it feels

like digging through endless ironh hard

perafrost in sub-zero conditions. It

feels like soaring through metal rails

by hand on starvation rations. The

gnawing incessant hunger [snorts] wears

him down. The everpresent threat of

violence grinds at his nerves. The wind

begins to pick up. The flexcks of snow

feel like needles against the skin.

Alexander screws up his face beneath the

thin wool of his homemade mask as

another bout of coughing begins in his

lungs. A guard sees him hesitate and

barks an order at the spluttering,

wheezing Snobsky. The guard then raises

his rifle and Snowski complies. He puts

his blade back to the metal and resumes

his task. Snowski wonders how many of

his fellow prisoners will kill over in

the snow today. How many will breathe

their last as forgotten men and women in

this forgotten part of Siberia? He

wonders if maybe tomorrow

it might be his turn.

Faced with such inhuman conditions, it

seems that Alexander Snowski's fate is

sealed. He couldn't possibly survive.

And yet, miraculously, he will. And many

of his comrades out there on the Salak

hard railway will survive too. Across

the country, millions of people will

actually endure the torment of the Gulag

network and will somehow live to tell

the tale. In this video, we're looking

at how this is possible and considering

how you or I might survive the Soviet

Gulak system. As you might expect, some

details of life within the gulags is

simply too extreme for YouTube, but

we'll be covering this in greater depth

over on our Patreon.

In 1917, the Romanov dynasty came to an

end. The imperial family that had ruled

Russia for more than 300 years was no

more. Over the next 5 years, the

Bolsheviks would consolidate their power

with a bloody civil war that left nearly

2 million dead. By 1922, the Bolevixs

had full control over the Soviet Union.

But they also had a problem. What should

they do with the system of prisons and

labor camps left behind by the SARS? The

obvious answer, of course, was to put

the system to good use. As early as

1918, the new regime was filling these

crumbling prisons with inmates. On June

4th, Leon Trosky referred to conslas or

concentration camps for the first time.

By the early 1920s, the first proto

goulag was emerging. In the bitter

conditions of the Svitzky Islands, the

Soviet Union created the Solovki special

camp. This was a labor facility where

convicts would work for the glory of the

USSR and her proletariat revolution. The

central idea of the Goolag was born and

over the next 30 years a sprawling

network would develop right across the

Soviet Union. The word goolag is

actually an acronym. It stands for the

main directorate of correctional labor

camps and actually refers only to the

secret police force who oversaw these

prisons not the prisons themselves. But

in English the word is used differently.

Gulag refers to the entire network of

labor camps and the strict repressive

conditions within them. Around

18 million people passed through the

Gulag system before it was dismantled

under Nikita Kruef. Official figures

they up 10% of these inmates perished in

the camps, but the true number is likely

to be, as you can imagine, much higher.

So, if you were transported back to the

USSR in those golden decades and found

yourself persecuted by the Soviet

regime, how would you survive? How would

you make sure you ended up on the right

side of that statistic? First of all,

you'd need to get very good at surviving

on minimal sustenance. The daily rations

in the gulags were meager. According to

NKVD manuals and the accounts of author

and former inmate Alexander Soljinets,

prisoners would receive thin barley

porridge in the morning along with 150

grams of bread and a measure of tea.

There would be no milk added to the

porridge or tea, and you would receive

no fat at all with your meal. The

porridge itself wasn't really porridge

anyway. It was actually just barley that

had been placed in water and brought to

the boil. At lunch, you would receive

your ration of balenda. This was just a

broth created from leftover animal

bones, boiled repeatedly until there was

basically nothing left. Vegetables might

be added too if you were lucky, but this

would usually be things like cabbage

offcuts and potato peels. Again, there

was no fat and essentially no protein to

be found. Eating this meal would be

physically damaging for prisoners as it

did not provide the nutrients they

needed and actually left them at a

significant calorie deficit. But it

would also be, as you can imagine,

psychologically damaging. Those leftover

bones and potato pills showed that

someone at the camp was eating well,

just not you. You'd be served the

blender again in the evening, but this

time it would be thickened a little bit

with some barley. You might also get a

tiny ration of sugar if you'd been a

really good boy, but this would be your

only treat of the day. The quality of

food varied from camp to camp, and

Alexander Snowski remembered how the

food at the Agala camp was awful. They

boiled soya, which is heavy and falls to

the bottom of the boiler. The cook knew

how to serve it. For an ordinary

brigade, he ladled from the top so they

got water. If there were thieves in the

brigade or if it was for the post, the

sewing workshop, the spa or sick bay,

then he labeled from the bottom. You

might have noticed something here. Cooks

would give preferential treatment to

people labeled thieves. And this is

going to be important later on, but

let's not get ahead of ourselves for

now. Back to Igardka. Snobsky believed

the Russians were carefully calculated

to keep prisoners alive, but nothing

more. They gave her 800 gram of bread in

the morning for the whole day. Bread is

life. It was served precisely. Try

giving out 10 grams less and they kill

you. If you were being transported

between camps, your rations would have

been even worse. Inmate Evina Yinsburg

remembered being given just a single cup

of water per day. We were tormented by

the decision whether to drink the whole

cup in the morning or to try to save it.

It might be possible to work harder to

get more rations or to find yourself a

job that entitled you to more

sustenance. Performing a task that

directly benefited the Soviet Union

could be very helpful here. For example,

if you're employed as a logger or a

minor, it was actually in the interest

of the authorities to keep you wellfed.

There's a big caveat to this though

because these jobs were often physically

demanding and very dangerous. For

instance, at the Kyma Gulag, prisoners

were sent to work in the nearby gold

mines. It's believed that anywhere from

250,000 to more than a million people

lost their lives here between 1932 and

1954,

just 22 years. In the coal mines of the

Vaua Gulag, around 15% of inmates lost

their lives each year. Other gouags

carried unique hazards, too. At

Bugishag, prisoners were forced to mine

uranium to contribute to the Soviet

Union's developing nuclear program. Many

died here in agonizing circumstances

after handling uranium without

protective equipment. Most prisoners

would not survive more than a year at

this camp. In order to squeeze the most

value from the Gulags, Stalin put

prisoners to work as slave laborers on a

series of mega projects. This included

the White Sea Canal stretching from

Leningrad at its southern end to the

Barren Sea in the north. Stalin used the

White Sea Canal as a piece of

propaganda, proclaiming how convicts

could reforge themselves into useful,

productive members of society. In truth,

of course, huge numbers of slave

laborers simply worked themselves to

death. In the words of author Marshall

Burman, "The canal was a triumph of

publicity, but if half the care that

went into the public relations campaign

had been devoted to the work itself,

there would have been far fewer victims

and far more development. Another of

these projects was the Salakard Igara

Railway where Alexanderki was sent. The

project was never actually finished and

the railway has become known as the dead

road due to the heavy human cost of its

construction. Working on these projects

might secure you a few extra rations,

but they also might kill you, too. You

might also get special privileges by

becoming an NKVD informant, presuming

you had any valuable information that

the secret police was interested in. You

just need to make sure you didn't get

caught informing on any of your fellow

inmates, as the repercussions could be

severe. Snitches get stitches anywhere

you go. If becoming an informer or

signing on to a special work detail

weren't possible for you, then you'd

need to scavenge for scraps around the

camp. But if being an informant or

working in the mine isn't for you, don't

worry. You might survive. You just need

to scavenge for scraps around the camp

to scratch out a living. If you had any

items of value, they too could also be

traded for more food. In time, the

authorities realized that these

starvation rations weren't actually any

good for productivity in the camps. NKVD

head Levventi Barrier grew worried that

the camps were simply not providing any

meaningful results. He ordered an

increase in food rations, hoping to give

inmates more strength for their work.

But this was not an act of kindness from

the famously inhuman barrier. It was

part of a program to make goolags more

economically viable. As well as

increased rations, Barrier introduced

harsh coercive measures for absentees,

those refusing to work and wreckers. In

other words, he was leading with both

carrot and stick. He also implemented

11-hour work days and prevented

prisoners from having more than 3 days

off per month. So, you might get a bit

more grub, but you'd soon burn off those

additional calories. Another survival

tactic might be to attempt an escape,

but the authorities had considered this.

Goo prisons and labor camps were not

typically built near cities or towns.

They were placed in the vast expanses of

Siberia and often within the Arctic

Circle. Far from human habitation and

with limited transportation options,

this rendered escape practically

impossible. And it also ensured that

prisoners remained in bitterly cold

conditions, especially during those long

sunless Russian winters. Winter

temperatures could in fact get as low as

-40 or even colder. Ivana Masjack

remembered being ordered outside in the

morning when the temperature was -43° C.

As a comparison, industrial freezes are

typically set to around -8° C.

Hypothermia quickly sets in in these

conditions as the body's core

temperature drops alarmingly. This meant

that you would burn through your meager

rations almost immediately due to

constant shivering, and that was before

any actual work had even begun. To

protect yourself, you could try cobbling

together a homemade mask to protect your

face from the cold. But this often

wouldn't be enough. At the Kolyma camp

in northeastern Siberia, witnesses

reported men who were missing ears,

noses, and fingers lost to the noring

decay of frostbite. To stay alive, you'd

need to keep your clothes in good

condition. Inmates would typically be

provided with a telica, which was a

quilted jacket that might provide some

protection against the cold. They'd also

receive a set of quilted trousers to go

along with this. But if these clothes

became damaged or torn, prisoners would

be exposed to the dangerous winter

conditions. Remaining fit and strong,

even on starvation rations and regularly

repairing and maintaining your tenria

would be key to survival. Even during

the summer, escape was basically

impossible. If you managed to get past

the perimeter of your camp, you'd

quickly become lost in the broad

Siberian hinterland beyond the boundary.

If you didn't die from malnutrition or

exposure, you'd be eaten alive by the

clouds of mosquitoes that characterize

the Siberian summer. Sometimes these

tiny insects were even employed as a

method of punishment. Former prisoner

Oleg Vulov remembered, "The warden got

angry and ordered to put prisoners on

mosquitoes." This basically meant being

stripped and tied to a tree where

mosquitoes would then gather, biting the

defenseless victims repeatedly, driving

them into helpless, itchy madness. So

whether in the winter or summer, escape

was not an option. You'd need to stick

it out in the camps. And this meant

praying that you didn't get sick.

Sickness was a real problem in the

goolags. Those pests and insects would

spread bloodborne infections from inmate

to inmate while the poor diet led to

illnesses such as scurvy and pelagra.

Scurvy causes intense feelings of

exhaustion as the muscles and joints are

racked with pain and the energy seeps

from your body. This of course sounds

bad enough by itself, but it's even

worse when you're then sent to toil in

the mines and lumber yards each day on a

calorie deficit. More severe symptoms of

scurvy include bleeding gums and tooth

loss and the reopening of old wounds.

Prisoners would find themselves with

open sores and gushing wounds which will

ripe for infection. Pelagra also affects

the skin, but affects the stomach and

even the mind too. Sufferers report

severe diarrhea and feelings of

confusion, depression, and even

psychosis. Both scurvy and pelagra are

associated with vitamin deficiencies,

usually caused by long sea voyages. On

land, there's really no reason for

anyone to suffer either ailment, unless,

of course, they're being incarcerated in

hellish conditions. Other diseases were

even more dangerous and even more likely

to kill. Typhus begins just like a bad

case of the flu, but can quickly

deteriorate into a crippling, organ

damaging, and ultimately fatal illness.

Tuberculosis also spread quickly in the

Goolags. No surprises there. It starts

as a persistent cough and fever and then

progresses into severe respiratory

problems. Without proper treatment, it's

fatal and many prisoners did not get the

proper treatment. The cramped conditions

and poor sanitation of the Goolags made

dysentry and collar a common too. These

illnesses cause significant fatalities

right across the camp system. The

physically demanding labor also caused

physical injuries like hernas, soft

tissue damage, or broken bones. In all

instances, you'll be treated at the

camp's medical facility, but don't

expect an easy ride here either. Ill or

disabled prisoners were considered

economically unproductive, and so they

would be rushed back to fitness and sent

back out to work before they had fully

recovered. For those who were

permanently disabled, they may be sent

to an invalid camp, but they would also

be considered permanently unproductive,

which put them at greater risk.

Historian Gulf Alexopoulos described how

camp officials viewed illnesses and

death through the prism of productivity

and maintained a certain contempt for

the uselessness of the not work capable

inmates. Alexopoulos also believed that

sick and disabled prisoners were

routinely perceived as fakers or

criminalized for their illnesses.

However, some prisoners did

intentionally injure themselves to

escape from work details. Deliberately

slicing off your own finger might be a

way to escape the disease-ridden grind

of the labor camp, but Alexopoulos

offers us a warning. Such inmates

typically received additional sentences

for self mutilation. The trifecta of

meager rations, bitter, diseaseinfested

conditions, and backbreaking labor

killed many in the Goolag system. But it

wasn't just a case of survive all of

this and you'll be fine because there

were also the guards and gulag

authorities to think about. Sanctioned

violence was a big part of life in the

Gulag system and beatings and tortures

would be handed out on a regular basis.

We've already seen how guards used the

unforgiving natural environment to

inflict discomfort and humiliation on

their inmates. But during the winter,

this was even easier to achieve. Witness

accounts speak of exhausted prisoners

who were made to lie down in the snow

until they began to freeze and then told

to stand up again. This process would be

repeated again and again until the

guards decided it was over. This

happened to Ivana Masjak. They told us,

"Come down and back up, down in the snow

and back, down and back." It was

horrible. Beatings were a regular

occurrence. The guards may use fists or

boots to harm anyone who stepped out of

line, but frequently they would just use

the butt of their rifle. Injuries would

then go untreated, exacerbating the

physical exhaustion in bitter cold

conditions. Many people died this way.

Some aspects of violence in the goolags

are even more disturbing and can't be

covered here without falling foul of

YouTube's censorship policy, but these

details are included in the Patreon

version of our video. Despite the brutal

conditions and high death toll, the

gulags weren't really supposed to be

death camps. They were intended as labor

camps in which prisoners paid their

assumed debt to society through

productive work. But this required total

compliance from the inmate population,

which in turn required the threat of

lethal violence, and so summary

execution became part of the mechanism

of control. Gulag inmate Lev Copelv

remembered being told, "No talking, no

squirming about. Any move to get up will

be taken as an attempt to escape. The

guards will shoot without warning.

Another account says that a common order

was quote, "A step to the left or a step

to the right is considered an attempt to

escape. We will shoot without warning."

The phrase attempt to escape is

important here. Gulag guards were

exposed to constant propaganda and

referred to as the steel in the state's

sword as the USSR battled subversion and

social enemies. This meant that many

guards were quite happy to murder the

inmates in their charge because they

felt they were doing something noble.

And with the phrase attempt to escape,

they had a one-sizefits all excuse to

cover up their crimes. So, if you wanted

to survive the beatings, the torches,

the extra judicial killings, then you'd

need to keep your head down and get on

with the daily tasks of life in the

Gulak. But you'd also need to be

relatively lucky because it was so easy

to fall foul of the camp authorities

just by looking the wrong way at the

wrong time and then suddenly you're a

victim of violence. However, many

killings weren't actually the result of

incidental violence from the guards, but

the result of direct orders. If you were

a political prisoner, you might become a

specific target of the party, and then

there's no way to escape punishment. On

the wooded shoreline of Lake Oenega

stands. In 1997, investigators made a

grim discovery. In this tranquil earth

lay one of the largest mass graves ever

discovered from the Soviet period. 6,241

prisoners were brought here during the

great terror of 1937 to 1938. They were

forced to lie in shallow graves and then

shot in the back of the head. Across the

country, graves similar to this one

exist. They actually leave great

depressions in the ground because once

the decaying bodies collapse, the earth

sags down on top of them. Similar mass

graves exist across the former Soviet

Union from Kurapati and Belarus to

Pivarika in Ikust. But even avoiding

maltreatment from Gulag guards and camp

authorities wasn't enough to guarantee

an escape from violence. Cast your mind

back to Alexander Snowsky's description

of the food at Igka. He recalled how the

cook gave special treatment to thieves.

But these thieves weren't just

pickpockets and muggers. Instead, they

were bands of hardened criminals who

existed within the goolag system, and

getting on the wrong side of them was

seriously bad news. Gang activity became

a real problem in the Soviet Union after

the 1917 revolution. While criminals had

always been part of Russian society, the

chaos and violence of those years meant

that chaotic and violent individuals

rose to the four. This developed into an

extensive network of criminal activity

known as the Vorovskimer or the thieves

world. Stalin himself had a background

in organized crime, which I've covered

in more detail in my recent video on the

weirdness of the man, but even he

understood that the thieves world could

not be allowed to continue. His NKVD and

later KGB managed to rid Russian society

of these undesirable types. Only, of

course, he didn't get rid of them all

together. He simply moved them from the

streets of Russian cities to the camps

of the Gulak system. In the words of

journalist Michael Schwartz, "The

thieves became a group of criminal

baronss who kept order in the Goolags

and governed the dark gaps in Soviet

life beyond the reach of the KGB. The

thieves operated with their own code

within the Goolags. Sometimes they'd

flat out refuse to work or disregard

orders from the guards or dispense their

own justice. Dispensing justice, of

course, meant doing the torturing,

beating, and murdering of anyone they

didn't like instead of getting the

guards to do it. So, if you're looking

to survive in this kind of thing, it

puts you in an awkward position. On the

one hand, you need to comply with every

single whim of the guards, doing

everything they ask of you and never

stepping out of line. However, if you're

seen as being too complicit, then you're

going to get on the radar of the

thieves. And if they think that you're

informing on them or otherwise acting

against their interest or too cozy with

the guards, then it's curtains for you.

Lev Copalev remembered how informers

were loathed and targeted in the camps.

In prison, we used to be afraid of

informers and talked about them in

whispers. Here in the camp, we spoke of

them out loud. They served for the sake

of the little handouts the machine threw

their way, and they served out of fear.

Prisoners who collaborated with guards

as a way to gain special treatment would

be known as suki. If you're a Russian

speaker, you'll know that this is not a

very nice word. These suki would find

themselves low in the gulag pecking

order and may be beaten or killed as a

result. Of course, you could try to stay

alive by becoming one of the thieves

yourselves, but to achieve this, you'd

need to have spent your entire life as a

ruthless, hardened criminal doing out

street justice to whoever crossed your

path. In other words, if you're

allegible to join the thieves, you

probably don't need this survival guide.

All of this changed in 1945, though. One

of the things that could get you labeled

as a suka was to collaborate with the

Soviet state, which included serving in

the Red Army. As the Great Patriotic War

came to an end in 1945, gouleags were

suddenly inundated with former Red Army

soldiers who had fallen out of favor

with Stalin and the Soviet regime. These

new prisoners were automatically labeled

Suki, and the thieves began doing what

they always did, bullying these

prisoners into non-existence. Except the

new prisoners had just spent four years

battling the Nazis in the most hellish

conditions imaginable. They'd seen their

friends blown apart in front of them,

and they'd each killed far more than any

Muscovite mafioso could ever dream of.

Men who'd been at Stalingrad or Kursk or

any of the other meat grinders that

Soviet troops were put through during

the Second World War weren't going to be

pushed around by some jumped up little

gangsters with their warped codes of

honor. From 1945 to 1953, the so-called

sucha or the wars raged throughout the

gulag system. Red army veterans fought

constant battles against the mafio

clicks that had made the gulags their

own. And let's not act surprised here.

It was the veterans that won. The

thieves were no longer on top. So even

being a thief [laughter] wouldn't

necessarily save you from a violent

death at the hands of your fellow

inmates.

But before we get too depressed, let's

remember that in 1953, Mr. Joseph Stalin

dies and that meant the beginning of the

end for the Gulak system. The following

year, Nikita Kruev announced a sweeping

program of releases and the review of

around 4 million political prisoner

cases. Deaths within the Gulak system

fell sharply in the years after Stalin's

death. More than 20,000 had died in

1952, falling to 9,628

in 1953. Death rates continued to fall

year on year until the system was

abolished in 1956. In its last year of

operation, 0.4%

of those incarcerated in the Gulags lost

their lives, down from almost 25% in

those dark days of 1942.

But this still meant that more than

3,000 people died during those final

months of the Gulag system. Even during

the so-called Kruev Thor, the Gulag was

still a deadly place to be. These

figures are shocking, but they do

highlight something important. They show

us that despite the wicked conditions,

the majority of goule inmates did live

through their ordeal. Through a

combination of physical fitness and

mental ingenuity and some good

old-fashioned willpower, they kept

themselves going. They did what they

could to find additional food. They kept

themselves healthy and maintained their

equipment. And they avoided the

attentions of malicious guards and

gangsters. With wits, strength, and good

old-fashioned luck, they survived. But

what does survival mean exactly? True

survival is surely more than just

staying alive at any cost. It's about

maintaining your dignity, your humanity,

your sense of self, your ability to

recover. Everything about the Gulak

system was designed to be

psychologically and emotionally

crippling. From the moment you set foot

within the system, you were assaulted by

an endless barrage of mental torments,

leaving men and women as broken shells

of their former selves. How could you

possibly endure all of this and still

come out the other side intact?

Susanna Petro was only 17 when she was

sent to the Gulak in 1951.

She offers some advice. Petra advocated

walking around a lot within yourself to

avoid succumbing to boredom and inertia.

She recommended washing yourself with

cold water to feel stronger and

healthier. She also advised taking care

of your appearance and maintaining

self-respect. She said you shouldn't get

disheveled. This is important. You

shouldn't go seedy and walk with undone

shoelaces and without buttons because if

you go to seed, it will be the beginning

of the end. We saw people dying in front

of our eyes and those were the people

who didn't take proper care of

themselves. But psychological and

intellectual stimulus is also crucial.

Petra recommends talk to yourself if you

are in solitary confinement. If they

don't let you read books, you have to

recite things by heart and you have to

train your memory all the time. I gave

myself lessons, school lessons, trying

to remember my school timetable. This

approach helped to keep Petro alive and

sharp throughout her time within the

Koulac. But even with such psychological

resilience, she was still damaged by the

experience. When she was eventually

released, she had this to say. It was

like being born again, and I wanted to

go back. It was very strange because in

theory, a person should be overjoyed at

having come back. But this world is no

longer our world.

Other inmates used the destructive power

of the Gulag as a sort of creative and

philosophical fuel. Alexander Schozinets

first entered the Gulag system in 1945

after criticizing Stalin and the USSR in

letters written to a friend. The

dehumanizing treatment he experienced

whilst a prisoner would inspire his

later works, The Gulag Archipelago and

One Day in the Life of Ivan

Dennisovvich. These books would help

many outsiders understand what took

place within that system. Soljen

remained stoic about his years in the

gulag. He said, "When you've robbed a

man of everything, he's no longer in

your power. He's free again." This is an

admirable way to approach such hardship.

But for millions of people who

experience the same system, it wouldn't

have felt much like freedom. It would

have felt like having every last

semblance of your being ground into the

dust. Even if your life did not end in

the goule, you'd carry its trauma with

you until your dying day.