ON THE IDEA OF LABOR, LABOR LAW, AND FORCED LABOR SELECTED REMARKS IN THE SOVIET UNION (1917-1945)

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, work was compulsory according to the 1918 labor code. This stemmed from the ideas of Marx. This position was also held by Lenin, Trotsky and others. The Communist Party could assign anyone any work. Evading work was a counter-revolutionary crime. Likewise, it was a crime to arbitrarily change one’s place of work. The compulsion to work required the use of terror. Terror was an everyday phenomenon in the USSR. Low labor productivity was a constant affliction. Prison labor was used en masse from the beginning. The GULAG system (forced labor camps) expanded. Prison labor was becoming less and less productive. In 1956, the GULAG camps were renamed “penal colonies,” which still exist in Russia today.

Nieopiewani bohaterowie tragicznego pokolenia

This is an expanded version of text presented during II International Conference of Association of Polish Physicians in Chicago on 9.30.2019 as a celebration of the 80th anniversary of the beginning of WWII and the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising [1]. The author, a son of Polish physicians, professor emeritus of Columbia College Chicago, shows – using his parents’ biographies as examples – the fight for humanity itself and for the humanistic values of the medical profession under both Nazi and communist totalitarian rule. He described the way of life of his father – a Polish commissioned military officer, a psychiatrist, prisoner of Soviet labor camps, participant of the Battle of Monte Cassino, organizer of programs of psychiatric care for Polish soldiers and veterans in Italy, England, and the United States. Likewise, he described the life of his mother, a pediatrician working for The Baudouin House in Warsaw, who was rescuing Jewish children from the Holocaust risking her own life. Forced to leave Warsaw, she and her 6‑year‑old daughter illegally crossed the borders of several countries to unite in Verona, Italy with her husband. Sharing a soldier’s life with him, she placed care for their expanding family above her own job as a physician. The publication contains copies of documents e.g. discovered by the author in Russia at the time of making his documentary film “Children in Exile” about the fate of Polish children sent to Soviet labor camps

Remembering and Memorializing German-Romanian Gulag Victims in the USSR through Historical Documents and Historical Fiction

This paper examines the memory of the Romanian-German victims of the Soviet Gulag as recorded in recent collections of testimonies and interviews, a museum exhibition, an audio-visual documentary project, and Herta Müller’s 2009 novel Atemschaukel. It employs Alexander Etkind’s notions of “soft memory” and “hard memory” to discuss some of the key historical and political events that have impeded the establishing of consensual remembrance policies of the Soviet Gulag in communist Romania. I show how both German and Romanian communities since 1990 have memorialized the Gulag and discuss Atemschaukel as a legitimate impulse to document both personal and collective trauma of the second and subsequent generations. I argue that in the absence of a crystallized, hard memory, the historical documents and the historical fiction analyzed serve as viable examples of soft memory that succeed in memorializing the forced labor camps experience in its collective and individual forms.

Formation of the penitentiary System of Soviet Ukraine (first half of the 20th century)

The process of organizing and becoming a system of execution of criminal penalties in Soviet Ukraine has been investigated since the Education of the Ukrainian SSR until 1930 - the beginning of the 1950s.; marked the main stages of the development of the state; The main regulatory acts of the structural and organizational activities of the penitentiary system are analyzed. In the 1920s. The Soviet penitentiary system was considered as a composite punitive system of the state and an effective means of combating the «class enemy». At the same time, the system of correctional institutions in Ukraine has not yet been considered as a means of severe punishment in the conditions of isolation from society, and it was also interpreted as an integral part of the condemnation system of convicts in social waste. The system of execution of criminal penalties to which correctional labor camps and general places of detention were determined. Independent subsystems were considered prison institutions (ordinary and investigative prisons), as well as labor colonies for minors and children's educational colonies. It has been established that under the conditions of Stalinism, an extensive network of the criminal executive system was a kind of foundation of totalitarian regime, was in an organic relationship with the administrative command system. The state administration of criminal and executive institutions in the post-war years carried out, and based on the principles of strict control of various departments of the NKVD, NKGB, MJ, Ministry of Internal Affairs.

ACTIVITIES OF THE FORCED LABOR CAMP IN THE CHUVASH AUTONOMOUS REGION IN THE TOWN OF CHEBOKSARY

The article attempts to analyze the activities of forced labor camps using as an the example the functioning of the Forced Labor Camp of the Chuvash Autonomous Region (ChAO) in 1920–1921. The work is based on previously unpublished sources of the State Historical Archive of the Chuvash Republic. The study shows the features of classifying the prisoners, their number in the forced labor camp of the Chuvash Autonomous Region in the town of Cheboksary, the regime restrictions imposed on them, it also analyses the most frequent violations of discipline in the camp, shows the issues of the camp organization and the conditions of service in it, the system of employees’ remuneration, as well as the difficulties in the institution’s functioning under existing socio-economic situation during the years of mass famine in the Volga region. The history of establishment and operation of forced labor camps is currently poorly covered, especially at the regional level. Basing on the results of the study, the author makes a conclusion on the reasons for liquidation of forced labor camps, as well as on the need for detailed studying the regional aspects of the problem under consideration.

Correction and resocialization of convicted persons on the territory of Ukraine in the XIX–XX centuries: theoretical and practical aspects

The article is devoted to a step-by-step study aimed at reproducing the chain of historical events, peculiarities of the origin and primary legislative consolidation of the processes of correction and resocialization in the system of execution of criminal punishments on the territory of Ukraine. The authors set the goal to analyze not only the gradation of scientific and philosophical thought on the correction and resocialization of convicts in the XIX–XX centuries, but also to investigate the level of practical implementation of doctrinal provisions. The main historical events that influenced the development of correction and resocialization in the demarcation, repressive and reorganization periods of the history of Ukraine were outlined. Particular attention was paid to the analysis of regulations. The aim was to investigate not only the terminological component, but also the actual presence, because the resocialization of convicts existed long before its legislative consolidation in its modern form. To write the article, the authors used quotes from leading scholars of the period under study, statistics on the number of convicts in Ukraine in different periods of history, materials of public speeches of leading lawyers and a number of primary sources of historical significance. It was found that in the XIX–XX centuries. correction and resocialization have gone through a difficult path of formation and further transformation. The formation of a modern approach to understanding these concepts was influenced by several complex reforms of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods, two world wars, a series of civil revolutions, the influence of about five separate state formations during political instability and destruction, periods of state formation, political usurpation with totalitarian regime. and a network of correctional labor camps, "thaw", complete Sovietization and a radical paradigm shift, which was associated with the improvement of domestic and foreign experience in the late twentieth century.

QUESTIONS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE FORMATION AND FUNCTIONING OF THE GULAG SYSTEM

This article examines the historiography of the formation and functioning of the GULAG prison-camp system. It is known that more than 20 camps were created on the territory of Kazakhstan, which covered almost all regions of the republic with their network. Of great interest are the studies of Russian and foreign scientists, who, based on a large archival material, were able to conduct a thorough analysis of the process of creating and developing the GULAG. Kazakh researchers also contributed to the coverage of this issue, revealing the features of the structure and activities of the camp system in the territorial borders of Kazakhstan. It should be noted that correctional labor camps to a large extent played the role of economic entities, rather than institutions for the re-education of criminal elements. In addition to criminality, in the 1920s and 1950s, there were people in the camps who were convicted on false and far-fetched charges. This article is not a complete overview of the problem under study and requires further study. The article was prepared in the framework of the scientific project No. AR08856940 «Prorvinsky and Astrakhan camps in the GULAG system: history, memory, heritage (1932-1950))».

THE SITUATION OF PRISONERS OF WAR IN KAZAKHSTAN AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

As a result of the Second World War, representatives of various European and Asian nations, former soldiers of the German and Japanese armies were sent to the USSR labor camps as prisoners of war. Prisoners of war were accepted as unpaid labor in industrial and construction units, as well as in the defense enterprises of the USSR. During the operation of the camp system, there were problems with the provision of food to prisoners of war, the lack of adequate housing, which led to the deaths of prisoners of war. The main issue raised was the situation of prisoners of war working in camps on the territory of Kazakhstan.

Нерепатрійовані: судові процеси над військовополоненими на Дніпропетровщині (друга половина 1940-х рр.)

One of the results of the Second World War was the presence of a large number of the Germans, Austrian, Romanian and other prisoners of war on the territory of the Soviet Union. Their were actively used in the postwar reconstructions. The article is devoted to the analysis of personal histories of the former enemy soldiers who were kept in the USSR after 1945 and then they were convicted in the 1940's. The main sources are the materials of the Security Service of Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast archives. The mentioned above archival materials show that, despite the prosecution, the final sentence for prisoners of war was the same and they had to spend 25 years in labor camps. Particular attention is paid to the cases of George Ionescu, Rudolf Petri, Paul Edgard, Joseph Lecker and Johann Pikanski. In 1945–1950 they were held in detention camps No. 315 or 460, which were located on the territory of Dnipropetrovsk region. Each of these persons chose their own surviving strategy in the camp – escape attempt, avoiding work, finding opportunities to obtain information about the outside world, honestly abiding by rules or sabotage. However, despite the chosen way, the process of repatriation was delayed for all of them until the 1950s. Only after the «Thaw» («Vidlyhy») epoch and the amnesty laws passing, the prisoners got possibility to return to their homeland.

Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (eds.), The Holocaust and North Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. 352 pp.

This chapter discusses The Holocaust and North Africa (2019), a collection of fifteen essays edited by Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein. As this collection makes clear, the Holocaust did not target European Jewry exclusively. North African Jews of Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan, and Libyan origin were also subjected to German, French, or Italian occupation. While the focus is on North Africa, no attempt is made to remove it from the geographical margins of Holocaust history. Instead, almost all of the essays point to what was clearly unique to North Africa: the link between antisemitism and colonialism. The book is divided into four sections, with the first two parts examining the interface between the Holocaust and colonial North Africa. Topics covered include the application of race laws, the expropriation of Jewish property, and the internment of Jews in forced labor camps.