GULAG camps in Stalin's period

The practice of exile and benefiting from prison labor, which has examples in different nations in history, is the practice that Soviet Russia inherited from Tsarist Russia. The camps affiliated with GULAG, which was institutionalized by the Soviet Russian government, systematically established all over the USSR and named after the Russian abbreviation of the Base Camp Administration, became better known after many years. This system, which researchers first got to know through novels and memoirs, and which has many aspects that need to be clarified with new documents, has been examined in three parts in our thesis, and primary and secondary sources, especially English and Russian, have been examined with the source search method. Many memoirs and studies published long before the collapse of the SSBC became important sources of our work. In addition to these, the work of the Moscow-based GULAG History Museum has been one of the most important sources we have benefited from. In the first part of our thesis, which we named Social Life in the Stalin Era GULAG, the camps that form the core of the GULAG system, the administrative structure of these camps, their place in the Soviet penal system and their importance in the liquidation of the Turkic World intellectuals are discussed. In the second part, the general situation of the prisoners in the camps, women and child prisoners and daily routine are discussed. In the third chapter, which is the last part of our thesis, the role of GULAG in the Soviet economy is discussed. The labor of the prisoners in the camps, the major projects they worked on and the mines within the economic policies of the Soviet Government, which took over the economic debris from the Tsarist era, are presented in tables, figures and photographs. In particular, it is emphasized how the camps are tried to be used functionally in Siberia, which is one of the most productive regions in terms of underground and surface resources, although there are problems even in the recruitment of paid workers.