What It Was Like to Be Held In a Soviet Gulag
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- Опубликовано: 27 май 2024
- What are Soviet Gulags? What happened in Gulags? And what did they accomplish? The word "Gulag" is actually an acronym of its official bureaucratic name, Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitel'no-trudovykh LAGerei. When translated from Russian, it roughly means "the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps."
The gut-wrenching system of forced labor camps was first established following the Russian Civil War. By the 1950s, the Gulags would stretch across the entirety of the Soviet Union's territory. It was arguably one of the darkest periods of 20th-century history.
#Gulags #SovietUnion #WeirdHistory 
Развлечения
My wife's grandpa was a soldier in the USSR, but was caught by the Nazi in early 42 and sent to concentrationcamp. He then spent 3 years building bunkers and positions and when freed he was sent to Gulag in Siberia because getting caught by the enemy was a shame. He got released in 52 and then spent 5 months traveling mostly on foot back to his wife in Kyiv
My God, what a tough man. What horror some people has seen?
Which did he say was worse?
@@one-re2ub The Gulag was worse. He was a big strong man with knowledge and experience in construction, and therefore worth something to the nazis. That's why he was sent to Germany to construct bunkers. He said he would get 2 and maybe 3 meals a day and was treated quite good in general. In gulag it was only 1 meal a day, sometime nothing. He was stuck in factory making different parts for trains, tanks and planes. People would get injured and die almost weekly. The only thing positive he ever said was that the work was at least inside.
@@vesleengen that's nuts. Thank you for sharing. What was the worst thing he saw in gulag if you don't mind me asking more?
@@one-re2ub The more day to day stories he never shared. Probably for a reason.
My Grandfather spent 9 years in a Siberian Gulag as a POW, after the war...
He didn't like to talk about it and a lot of health issues arose from those times in his life.
But He survived, returned, and lived to be 80. I was lucky enough to know him, and learn from him.
In my familly, my grand parents (especially my grand mother who stays really vague about it and quickly changes the topic of the conversation) don't talk about their past just like their parents didn't talk about their past. I tried to ask a few questions to my mother to see if she knew but they didn't tell her much as well. I guess their memories of the old Soviet Union will be taken to their graves.
I am glad he survived and you got to know him. Sorry he went through this atrocity. Let’s share those stories so history won’t repeat itself
That's simply amazing. I'm glad you were able to know him. That was his blessing.
@@jgallardo7344 Listening to him, changed my perspective on a lot of things. Like one time, we had pea soup, and I found a worm in it. I was like any other kid at the time, made a fuss. But my Papa calmly sayed... Oh, you are disgusted now, but when we were at the Gulag the food was often bad quality and from ingredients we also had the worse. Our pea many time had worms. We were really happy when it did, 'coz it meant we got at least a little meat... I ofcorse took the worm out, but had the rest of the food, no problem. It changes many things if you look at it like that. After the fall of the USSR, many people lost their jobs here too, the economy was in a bad shape. We were lucky, my dad kept his job, but he only made enough for the upkeep of our home, we didn't have money for food sometimes. So, we went to the forest, foraged, had what we could. It's in a big part due to my Papa that we survived those days. He showed us, how and what to pick, how to set traps, how to survive. And how to cook a full meal from almost nothing.
I'm thankful for him, every day, for his lessons in many things, practical and also on how to see and manage. To me, he will always be a grate Hero.
@@Dracoofthevas wow….that was mind blowing. There is something poetic or metaphoric when I read about the worm in the pea and sensing meat. I would have never picked that up. What a knowledgeable man! My blood boils when classmates I know put on social media that the US should experiment with communism. Seriously! I have known people who fled Communist rule in China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Cuba, and Vietnam and are grateful to be citizens of the United States. They are grateful they were not executed or starved to death. Our country is not perfect, but we have systems and liberties and great grassroots leaders who want to see equity, equality, and ensure Justice prevails. I have heard that Eastern Europe was in chaos after the fall of the Soviet Union. Plenty of poverty and some of my classmates in elementary school were adopted by American family in the 90s. I am grateful my friend Horia was born in the States while his parents - who left Romania after the execution of Ceaușescu - were attending the University of Maryland and raise him only for him to attend UMD and now lives in Austin, Texas. I love story telling and literature because it is humanities. It is the genuine emotions and experiences. We should not dismiss or disregard others experiences just because we didn’t. That’s not empathetic
The brother of my grandfather was in the gulag as POW from Stalingrad. From 1942 until 1953. He told me that they drank water from puddles and ate rats otherwise the food they were given would have never helped them survive, it was so bad that when they were given boiled potato peelings that was considered a great meal. There were no mice and rats in the camp because they were eaten, and during the harsh winters they were padding their clothes with cow dung or human excrements to keep them warm... as the barracks they were living in was offering no protection, and when someone died they had fights over their shoes and clothes. He attempted escape 3 times, the 3rd time he managed to escape and worked on a russian family farm somewhere in Siberian wilderness (who did not turned him in) until 1953 when the prisoners of war were released, and he got the on the train back to Romania. No one from the family expected him to be alive except his wife who never got remarried always sayng that he will be back. He was ill nourished, full of lice, unshaved and uncut when he was left at the romanian border from where he walked almost 800 km back to his home village. His mother did not recognie him at first until they have washed him and cleaned him. War and the attrocities that come from.it are no joke.
Wow this is amazing. He could write a book. I cant even fathom the sheer willpower it took to keep on living through that hell
Meh, it’s better than being held in a prison in imperial Russia. Or America. The mortality rates were much higher.
🍻
Damn
@@oneaboveall1895 👍
My grandfather, hungarian soldier spent 8 years in a GULAG, Siberia. In the first weeks many of the prisoners froze to death, as they were working outside in summer clothing (average -30 celsius). One day the soviets asked, who can sew? My grandfather immediately stood up that he can (altough he couldn't) but he knew that he needs to do something in order to survive. Because he was very talented with his hand, and very creative he managed to replicate the sewing what they showed to him, so he had a much better job inside, and more food. In his regimen, which was more than a thousand people only he survived. In his village where he lived only him, and one other guy came back (out of 216 soldiers). These are the parts of history, which is very well forgotten by western media.
Yes I agree it seems that soviet crimes are forgotten by west. I also don't get it why communism and Soviet Union is kind of meme now. It's trulely horrible system. Same or maybe even worse than nazism. Fortunately noone in my family was in Gulag, my great-grandfather fought in WW1 tho, in Austria-Hungarian Army :p Cheers from Poland
Oh wow
Hungarians in general forgot what is USSR thats why support russia
Literally watching a ‘western’ media video .. it’s Russians who forgot
I haven't forgotten.
Soviet police actually had quotas for the number of people they had to arrest and send to the gulags. Which is one reason why so many were snatched on the street for no reason.
kind of like how some police in USA operate...
@@Whatever-mx3bt except they are not hunting for slave labor
@@Whatever-mx3bt Jesus to compare soviet union atrocities to usa police force "atrocities". How delusional and childish can you be?
@@kat8753 in California they kinda do
@@imyourdaddy5822 in what way, all the homeless people laying around they shouldn't have a labor shortage and shoplifting isn't a crime in California anymore.
It is a good thing that you show how horrible the CCCP actually was. When speaking of WW2 most people only think about what the Nazi's did. This shows that Stalin was as horrible as Hitler was
Or how bad the war crimes of the Japanese were.
Don't go saying that on Twitter though they seem to have a fondness for evil Mario
The media doesn’t talk about Stalin because they’re a bunch of socialists. They always use Hitler as if he was the only pos in the 20th century.
Stalin was worse than Hitler. We should've allied with Germany to take out the USSR and then set Germany right.
But instead of horror, its met with applaud and heroism
My Grandfather (German Soldier) was captured on the Russian front and spent 5 years in a Soviet Gulag. He did not speak about it often but over the years my mom pieced together bits and pieces. Soviet women smuggled in raw potatoes from time to time and he would supplement with rats/insects. To his final years he would wake up from nightmares yelling in Russian.
@@CLairsoftFTW the person never specified whether his grandfather was a nazi or not, just a german soldier. There were many german soldiers forced to fight in the war even if they werent a nazi. So i think it might be a bit rude to be glad that another persons family member suffered horribly
@@CLairsoftFTW you’re exactly the type of person that a nazi/communist regime would love to have guard their prisons and interrogate their criminals. Worse, you sound like you might even enjoy that kind of job.
Hide your edge. It’s not cool or badass, it’s just making people cringe.
@@ConfusedGeriatric as a mixed race young man who absolutely despises communism I think you’d find Nazi/communist regimes would most definitely not want me anywhere near their prisons, or rather, guarding them, I’m sure they’d happily put me in them, nice try though pal. Same as this persons grandfather, as a German fighting for Hitler I couldn’t give a fuck if he agreed with him or not, if you’re not actively resisting evil and instead you’re facilitating it to save your own skin you’re not only evil you’re an evil coward, which is why I’m more than happy about that Nazi’s fate in the gulags
@@CLairsoftFTW it’s a metaphor. I’m saying you seem like you’d gladly sign up as an interrogator/guard against those you deem to be deserving, which you’re still supporting with your reply. That parallel is the danger.
Hatred is temptation/cause to commit acts of violence. It doesn’t matter what the core values of the regime are, oppression is oppression and it’s achieved through the same means.
I’m not calling you a nazi or a communist. But the way those regimes coerce people to commit heinous acts are through the same process of taking advantage of their hatred or sense of justice.
The world is unfair and there are many things wrong with it, but more hatred just makes it worse.
@@ConfusedGeriatric but I wouldn’t, I think evil people should be punished, I wouldn’t just be evil for the sake of it, or based on orders. That’s what cowards do, I’m a very moral person. If you’re a child rapist I would hunt you down and kill you, if you’re a commie but haven’t hurt anyone then I’d battle you with words. You see… morality. The Germans had none in WW2, so they deserved no mercy.
It's an understatement to say Gulag was just an force labour camp system. The gulag was used for extermination for political prisoners at some times.
not just at SOME times but right from the start. terminate the unwanted and problematic elements while getting the most out of them.
The Soviets reused the German concentration camps...many things the ussr did, the soviet judges blamed the germans in the court, this came to the public with the exposition of documents in 1989, the katyn massacre and the most famous of them, ironically , the two Soviet judges who signed Soviet crimes linked to Germany, are the same judges who signed the German concentration camp massacre...
“Sometimes”
Why would any nation at war keep a male prisoner of war alive?
@@khamzatchimaev65 labor...? Killing a capable person is a waste if you could instead get them to work for you before they die. Plus if you work them to death you don't need to spend resources killing them
You're a young soviet soldier defending your country, suffering the horrors of the Eastern Front. You're captured and survive appalling German pow camp conditions until the end of the war. You are then imprisoned and banished to the gulag for more years of hard labour and near death conditions.... It's unfathomable how the soviets had the the will to put humans through this kind of prolonged torture.
To communism, life is worthless so long as it serves the state. Cue China…
If you really are baffled by how they devalue human life, I would encourage you to read "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen. He explains communist beliefs and their lack of religion and how it affects their world views. Long story short: if there is no god, life is nothing more than a reaction caused by opposing molecular forces (like yin and yang), that all life struggles to assert itself (like plants making seeds), and since humans are the highest form of life ever recognized, we should use our intellect to create what is essentially a paradise on earth, and although billions of people may disagree, we can just kill them because it's worth it to make a better world. Just like you might rip out all the weeds in order to set the right stage to plant a glorious, beautiful, thriving garden, you might have to murder one or a hundred million or a billion people in order to set the right stage for an idyllic communist society, that being one in which you own nothing, have no value of your own life (proven by your non-stop volunteer efforts to further glorify communism), and hold the government's views as superior to all, be them familial or religious or whatever.
@@bigm9228 Putin still kills journalists today. It seems this never ends.
It's even more unbelievable people are stupid enough to want to take another shot at it.
@@HomelessOnline W. Cleon Skousen ? What is this Mccarthyism 2.0 ?
My great Uncle in Slovakia was thrown in a gulag because he was college educated. All the educated in Slovakia during Soviet occupation were demoted to menial jobs.
😢😢😢
Wow, just like in America today
@@jessehutchings so sick of you people making these false equivalencies none of you have even had a taste of the hell those people had to endure yet you cry like you're oppressed. Take a trip to North Korea and do something like give a picture of Kim Jong Un the middle finger then see if you're still crying about how bad the US is.
@@KAT-dg6el💯 or teach them false truths
@mrs mucha my ancestors are in the same region, maybe we had them cross paths together😇God Bless you🙏✨
My ex wife's mom told us about escaping the Red Army soldiers at night, when her family was raided during the annexation of the Baltics following WWll. Her uncle wasn't so lucky, was captured by the Soviets, and died in the gulags. The soviets didn't like anyone who was educated, owned businesses, etc.
The Soviets didn't like anyone. But they did like Vodka.
"Educated" and "owned businesses" isn't the classification they looked for. It was "capitalists that were willing to exploit their own people like they had been doing for over 100 years prior to the revolution"
@@karlmarx7511 My mother in law's family owned some shops in Latvia. They were just your average working people, ffs, and she was a child. And yes, professors, authors like Aleksander S. were targeted, social critics.
@@karlmarx7511 thats a long way of saying your under the age of 14
Reminds me of the Cambodian genocide
My grandfather met his best friends in a gulag. They were given pistols and told to fight each other 2v2, but they joined forces and shot the jailor and escaped together.
That's also my favorite part in Call of Duty.
How can they escape when there are so many other guards? Would love to hear the whole story.
Yeah ture @PWW-gi5ng
The fact that the guy who sent up Soviet rockets into space did time in a gulag. Then had to work with the guy who denounced him in the first place.
Korolev. Finally, he died because of his old jaw trauma which he got from policemen when he was in jail.
@@ivarkich1543 he had no jaw trauma, just check his last photos, it's a propaganda fiction
@@alexsamilo2204
are you ivans so brainwashed everytime you come across something that disputes your view you scream "propaganda"? That's a terrible way to actually learn stuff.
“The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a MUST READ.
TLDR: Communism turns out to be toxic AF and never ever ever works.
It's a fictional story that has nothing to do with the reality
Вы серьёзно это ахинею читаете, граждане иностранцы? Да ведь это художественная книга, не основанная ни на одном архивном документе! Это ведь даже на первой странице написано, чёрт возьми! Как вы её читали? Вас пугают ужасными Советскими трудовыми лагерями и злобными коммунистами уже век, а вы и рады пугаться, закрывая глаза на то, что аналоги трудовых лагерей были даже в США в годы Великой депрессии.
Почему ваши авторы не запишут видео про интернирование Японцев в годы Второй Мировой? Это ведь то же самое, что было в Советском Союзе, только у нас это называлось "депортацией", а у вас про вообще не принято говорить. Или это только СССР был такой плохой, а в остальных демократических странах такого не было?
Почему не расскажут про дефарминг, но непременно расскажут про ужасную практику раскулачивания в СССР?
Почему не расскажут про пытки в ЦРУ, но обязательно расскажут про пытки в НКВД?
Почему не расскажут про повсеместный голод 1930ых годов, но расскажут про "голодомор" на Украине, хотя тогда голодала вся Европа?
Почему не расскажут про полицейский беспредел, но расскажут про беспощадные тройки тридцатых годов?
Почему не расскажут про рабство в США, но расскажут про отсутствие паспортов у крестьян в Советском Союзе?
Почему не расскажут про расовую сегрегацию, но расскажут про кошмарное Еврейское дело 1948?
Почему не расскажут про Маккартизм, но расскажут про репрессии в стране Советов?
Почему не расскажут про условия жизни заключенных в тюрьмах Европы 20 века, но расскажут про жизнь заключенных в Советских трудовых лагерях (которым - о ужас! - ещё и заработную плату платили и давали награды за перевыполнение нормы выработки, после чего транспортировали на малую Родину)?
Почему не расскажут про пропаганду консьюмеризма в капстранах, но расскажут про пропаганду в соцстранах?
Почему не расскажут про агрессивную экспансионистскую политику других стран, но первостепенно расскажут про агрессивную экспансионистскую политику СССР?
Почему не расскажут про ужасы белого террора, но расскажут про ужасы красного террора в годы Гражданской войны в России?
Почему не расскажут про договоры о ненападении с Нацистской Германией в предвоенное время, но обязательно расскажут про Пакт Молотового-Риббентропа, подписанный уже после Пакта четырёх, Мюнхенского сговора и ряда аналогичных договоров с другими странами?
Почему не расскажут про реальные зверства Нацистов на территории СССР, но обязательно расскажут про придуманные антикоммунистами миллионы изнасилованных немок?
Почему не расскажут про богатства политиков и олигархов, но расскажут про вымышленные богатства Советской номенклатуры?
Почему не расскажут про жестокость Черчилля в отношении Бенгальцев, но расскажут про жестокость Сталина в отношении Татар?
Почему вам не расскажут про то, что безработицу можно победить, а еды с достатком хватает на всех жителей Земли, хотя каждый день человечество теряет по 40 тысяч человек в день? Почему не расскажут про то, что с нынешними технологиями в космос может летать каждый, а не только люди с большими сумками, наполненными деньгами? Почему не расскажут про проблемы с экологией и исчерпание Земных ресурсов, которые можно решить уже сейчас? Почему не расскажут про детское, трудовое и сексуальное рабство в 21 веке? Почему не расскажут про выгоду войн и терроризма, ведь без спонсирования они не продержатся и дня? Почему не расскажут про то, почему директор фирмы, в которой вы работаете, живёт в несколько десятков раз лучше вас, хотя вы трудитесь по 6 дней в неделю?
Ответы на эти вопросы вы никогда не услышите из экрана телевизора или монитора своего персонального компьютера. Бойтесь и дальше злобного здания Главного Управления Лагерей - единственного в Москве, пока на улицах умирают миллионы ваших сограждан от результата большой политики антикоммунистов. Страшитесь злобного ига коммунизма, ведь он придёт за вашими деньгами и разорит ваши добрые корпорации, дав взамен ужасный нормированный восьмичасовой рабочий день с всеобщим пенсионным обеспечением, злыми профсоюзами и страшной бесплатной медициной и образованием. Пугайтесь, Русские и коммунисты ведь такие ужасные, не то что остальные люди 20 и 21 веков. Поэтому продолжайте работать и умирать, ничего не оставляя после себя в этом мире, кроме детей и непогашенных кредитов. И не забывайте радоваться: вы ведь живёте не при коммунистах...
You’ve attracted some paid Kremlin trolls, it seems.
@@militustoica Мне платить не надо - я и за бесплатно вам скажу всё, что думаю о лицемерии политиков и СМИ, да и в Кремле у нас сидят такие же лжецы.
Ни на один вопрос из моего комментария выше вы так и не ответили.
I worked with a man who had apparently spent time in a gulag and he was by and far the coldest and most intimidating person I had ever met in my entire life.
How old are you?
"Russians are the scariest white people"
@@snorlaxxin8875 32 years old.
How did you meet him ?
@@Sky-ip6mh his first few words say he met him at work
I once worked with a polish bloke whose grandfather was in a Siberian gulag
He escaped in the middle of winter and walked for two weeks until he came across a train track he waited there for a few days and jumped on a passing train which brought him closer to the polish border
He then walked for another week to get back to Poland
The cold got to his legs and he could never walk right apparently
My mother was telling us what my grandmother told her. After ww2 lots of strong man in the village start disappearing and picked up by police. One of the gulag policy was to pick up ppl of non Russian civilian (Georgian, moldovian ,Ukrainian, Poland,Kazakhstan etc) and sent with the train in Russia for labor camp to work
💯one thing the authorities can't stop the ppl from is generational knowledge/stories, God Bless you🙏✨
And communism is praised still as fascist are hated
@@yukijames1321 definitely not but the way communism is favored so much when it is virtually the same in ways of harmfulness is kinda sick and wrong
@@michaelplace4754 bit conflicting. First off there's alot of one sided information in this video. (They only ate salted fish, didn't have toilets etc were regular occurances for alot of russia at the time.) The people were rallied up in the streets (NKVD is the secret police and there's ample evidence in regards to the leader of NKVD actively working with facists to create enough of a police state surrounding enemies of the state, trotskyists etc. That they intentionally inflated numbers and inflated the threat to stalin directly as a way to subvert public trust in the existing government). Also gulags typically had 10 year maximums and the intention was 1st punishment but secondly to reform offenders to reintegrate into society and offer something worthwhile once they are back in society. Hence the soviet scholarship.programs for ex inmates. They don't refer to the low security gulags in which people were sent to other collectivized agricultural districts and given their own homes while being monitored by locals. Or the fact that at the worst point of NKVD oppression they still had less police per capita than modern day America. Obviously some gulags were abh9rrent and they deserve no special privilege but historical context is important as well because the worst of these were in the time period of massive hostility from outside forces while simultaneously facing internal struggle against the state. The us the uk Italy Germany and many other countries resorted to "camps" when dealing with such large threats. Why not put this into perspective and ask yourself why dead nazis are considered victims of communism? Or the low birth rate during a famine? Or even the Jewish people in concentration camps? Why are the victims of nazis simultaneously considered victims of communism? Why not ask yourself about how America itself was founded on 100 million dead and locals were paid hefty sums by their own government to scalp families? None of this adds up and I think it shows most of you don't care your peddling inflated bullshit.
@@michaelplace4754 and yes fuck facists.
"WoULd YoU HaVE SuRVIvEd thE gULag?" I would've killed myself immediately
Same
How exactly?
I would have died of exposure on the train
Same, when they said they only gave salted fish as food at the trains, I was like “yeah I would have died there” I hate fish lol
@@abrahamramirez5725 Just a few days without food and you would eat all the fish you could get.
Outstanding! Thank you for this.
As someone who has read Solzhenitsyn's and other's accounts not only of the Gulag but of other aspects of Stalinist and post-Stalinist Russian life, I am thankful that you have not pulled punches on this one. Thank you for telling it like it was, even getting into Order 270 which many WW2 documentaries fail to mention.
Again, outstanding!
The Gulag Archipelago was a harrowing book...
When I was I child my camp counselor told my of his father's experience of a Siberian gulag in winter, he was told to fetch firewood without a handkerchief for his face and it was so cold outside that he suffered frostbite in his lungs.
Most arrests took place at night in people's homes. Very few were arrested in broad daylight, and fewer still in public places. From dusk till dawn, NKVD cars nicknamed "black Marias" would drive stealthily thru city streets (though never really dusguising themselves). Groups of prisoners, however, were transported to other jail locations and execution sites under the cover of secrecy - in non-descript delivery trucks labeled 'Bread' or 'Meat'.
Like how "Humanitarian aid" train wagons arrived to my city...just to take our food away.
@@BichaelStevens what's the context of this?
I heard there were widespread rumors of vampires in black Volgas that popped up in cities during the 60s-70s and ended up spread by the KGB, either to scare kids into coming home on time or to explain what happens to people who dissapeared. It also made people terrified of The Black Volga and started a superstition around the car iirc
Russians repeat itself. Now gulag has new forms on occupied Ukrainian territories. Because no one in world didn't judged russian commies then. Now world see Russians do same with Ukrainians now. As broadcast. And world almost "tired" from noisy Ukrainians and from ignoring their lovely Russians. Btw, about Solzhenitsyn. In the Gulag most of the prisoners were political, other nations, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Tatars and so on. There was Russian minority (for ex. like Kuznetsov group who betrayed Kengir uprising) but Russians in general justify USSR regime. Perhaps cause most of the prison wardens were Russians. However. Solzhenitsyn collected testimonies of many prisoners, published under his own authorship, and sprinkled it with his own reflections to justify this regime, monopolized the voice of rebels in the USSR, got the Nobel Prize for someone else's hard life experience. Some witnesses had questions whether he was in camps at all. Westerners has blind spot when looks at USSR, Russia and russians. Thats why it repeats again
In 1980'ies, I knew a former Gulag inmate. He was a Latvian SS legionnaire who fought on German side. Charged for the "treason against the homeland", he was sent to the Kolima gold mines (Magadan oblast). The temperature in winter there reaches minus 70 grades by Celsius scale. He told that every single morning they purged their bunkhouses from dead corpses of other inmates.
u met an SS? crazy
@@KAT-dg6el Idk, there arent that many SS especially in the 80s thats actually connected to the Nazis is crazy for me, who only connection to Nazi germany are these pretty silver Nazi coin with the Nazi swastika.
Just look at today, there are not many alive today who experienced ww2, let alone remember
@@TheEnabledDisabled The 80's was 40 years ago.
@@Dana-ie2bh Yeah, I'm so old, and that man, of course, isn't alive anymore.
@@Dana-ie2bh yeah and I am 20 years old
The Soviets rounded up most of the men in my Village, including my Grandfather and they were sent to a Gulag for labour, my grandfather was extremely lucky to return to his family, but after he was a different man, he was broken he just wasnt himself anymore.
Very sad for your grandfather
Imagine living in a world where you cast all of these personal stories aside as some "grand conspiracy" by the west. The west has its issues but at least we can talk about them openly.
Source: trust me bro
My great Grandfather Gottfried spent 4 years in a Gulag in WW2. The russians captured him while he was hiding with the family in our winegarden. They mistaken him for a soldier(He wasn't a soldier). He told they were given a hand full of bread and only enough water to survive. And there were rats everywhere crawling all over you while you were sleeping. He was a big man with 100 kg. When he came back home he had lost 50 kg. He told if you were small anf skinny you didn't take a chance to survive the hard labor. My grandfather and father told me this story because he died 1999, 2 years before i was born. They also told me he didn't like to talk about it so much because it was very hard for him.
My grandfather and his family were imprisoned in a pre gulag type prison camp during the revolution. They were "bourgeois foreigners” (his words). Through their luck and resources they were able to narrowly escape back to Europe. He would talk about his experiences during that time occasionally. I know that he lived with a lot of cptsd and ptsd from that and many other things he experienced in his life before coming to the US (their journey was not direct and pretty wild).
Very interesting if you have much more knowledge and some papers information you should maybe publish this it's a very very interesting thank you.
I'd be fascinated to know more about your grandfather's experience.
My grandmother's dying words put emphasis on the horrors of Communism. For my Catholic, Ethnic European paternal family, the Hebrew founded Communist regime was worse for them than the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Both regimes were, at their core socialist and both brought death and destruction... War without end.
@@skyedog24 some of my second cousins have formed a group. We are scattered between four different continents and are trying to share as much between each other as possible. One of my grandfathers older sisters did write as much as she could about their experiences and she had in her possession documents and photos. I did interview my grandfather for a paper that I wrote when I was twelve That was when I learned more about what happened. Coincidentally one of my cousins proposed starting a blog today regarding some of this family history. The passport photos after they were out of the "gulag” are hard to look at.
"A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened"
- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
no matter what atheists say, without God you can't have morality
God isn't real tho, humans are just terrible creatures by nature
@@scootza1 God is undoubtably real, humans sins are one of the proofs of revelation, without transcendance, man is left to either worship himself or the void that is present where God isn't.
@@spiffygonzales5899 LOL!
@@leeboy2k1 Or not worship anything and just try to be a good person, abide by the Golden Rule and all . . .
My sons Polish grandfather was in a gulag (not sure where) with his family when he was little. They got out and made it to Aotearoa, New Zealand, where he lived until he died in the early 2000’s.
I never had family sent to the gulag (labor camp) but my Aunt and my older cousin were sent to a soviet prison for saying that the soviet union was about to collapse in public on the streets of East Germany. They told me that the soviet police would only scream at you in russian and didn't speak English or German and hammer you with the butt of their rifles when you didn't respond to them or understand them.
"your never too young to swing a hammer for the Motherland." Beautiful.
Blyatiful
And in a general sense, it is true. Not in this case of course. Never too young to contribute to your country.
The word you want is you're, not your.
@@irinavasserman7599 More like *never too young to be state indoctrinated into a slave for the ruling elites who act as if they are descendants of Pharaoh.
You're
There is a book about how the Soviets would advertise in America during the Great Depression to invite them to join the new Workers Paradise. Once there the Soviets had them renounce their US citizenship and take their passports.
Often time these poor souls ended up in the Gulag.
Stalin was very suspicious of foreigners
Nice anecdote. How about a reference or citation.
Likewise with the communist inclined after the Finnish civil war. They fled to Russia only to be enslaved as not to spread any western ideas.
@@SetTrippin82 just goggle it and I'm sure the book title will come up...
It was a library book from awhile ago
@@SetTrippin82 oh I did it myself
The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia
by
Tim Tzouliadis
4.34 · Rating details · 957 ratings · 161 reviews
A remarkable piece of forgotten history- the never-before-told story of Americans lured to Soviet Russia by the promise of jobs and better lives, only to meet tragic ends
In 1934, a photograph was taken of a baseball team. These two rows of young men look like any group of American ballplayers, except perhaps for the Russian lettering on their jerseys. The players have lef
He wasn't exactly trusting of other Russians either.
One of my Jewish friends had a grandfather who was a victim of the Holocaust. That apparently wasn’t the end: when Soviet people liberated the camp, they hospitalized him and upon recovery, sent him to the Gulags. He managed to survive, barely.
I honestly don’t know if my friend was telling the truth or not, but based on this video, I don’t think he was lying.
Это правда советский союз был действительно таким жестоким даже хуже чем фашисты . От начала своего существование и до развала. Ничего хорошего и светлого не было. Кровь, смерть и дикая нечеловеческая жестокость.
@@liberty5405 по большей части при Сталине да.
Mans inhumanity to others is something I'll never be able to wrap my head around.
Given the right circumstances.... We are all capable of horrible, vicious, murderous deeds... It's just the absolute relative bliss and abundance that Makes those things so hard to comprehend. I mean .. I feel the same way as you .... But I am human..... And humas are capable of unthinkable things... Therefore I am capable of unthinkable things if pushed far enough.
@@thomaslove6494 I'd like to think I'd choose suicide over being so evil to so many.
@@patdonnelly9392 choice is an illusion when your entire life is torture
@@thomaslove6494 suicide is easy. It says so in the 'M*A*S*H*' movie.
@@patdonnelly9392 you don't know what you'd be like or chose to do to others if you were raised by psychopaths who did nothing but lie to and abuse you as grew up and warped your view of the world into a hate filled nightmare. What makes you think you are Christ reincarnated? How are you able to say you would have the fortitude and moral righteousness to do no harm after enduring a lifetime of pain and suffering you can't begin to imagine?
You're lying to yourself if you think you are any different than worst the human race has ever produced.
"The line between good and evil runs right through the heart of every man."
It's somewhat genetic of course.... But your mild mannered demeanor is mostly due to circumstance.... And the fact you avoid going to places on the planet where murderous aggression is needed to survive.
“Obey the State”. Those that don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it.
And those that blindly follow far right egocentric cult leaders that never accept wrongdoing are destined to end up like Nazi Germany.
Those that call the free press the enemy of the people, those that use the judicial system to target political rivals, those that challenge the judicial system of their country, that call foul play if they don’t get their way. Those that scapegoat ethnic and religious minorities. Those that bring forth conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory. Those that incite violent assaults on their nation’s Capitol in order to stop the people’s business.
@@darthjarjar5309 They wouldn't have to bring up new conspiracy theories all the time if the old ones weren't continually being proven right. For example "there won't be a vaccine mandate". Look where we are at now.
@@AbsyntheAndTears youd be a great yoga instructor with that stretch
@@darthjarjar5309 you are aware Obama jailed more journalists than Trump ever did, right?
"Vaccine passports are Stalinism."
Hot take of the year
Try reading "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It was written during the Cold War and describes a single day in a Gulag prison camp.
it's on RUclips
The same author wrote "The Cancer Ward" which hits just as hard
Too bad, Solzhenitsyn is a fictional writer and was never in a gulag himself
@@KingAGBozz Actually, he was. He criticized Stalin during WWII and was arrested. He spent time in labor camps but was eventually released when Khruschev was trying to dial back all the Stalinist policies of repression. "Ivan Denisovich" is a novel but was inspired by his own time in the camps as well as that of other dissidents.
@@KingAGBozz - Not only was he real, he was banished from the Soviet Union and wrote the Gulag Archipelago. He had a photographic memory that was proven after years that he remembered an amazing amount of details correctly.
This kind of imprisonment still persists today in the current prison system in Russia. A close friend of mine talks about it. She said the US prisons are “5 stars” in comparison to the Russian prisons. The treatment, conditions, corrupt wardens/guards, and prison gangs are horrible.
Why you care about russian prisoners. Russians repeat itself. Now gulag has new forms on occupied Ukrainian territories. Because no one in world didn't judged russian commies then. Now world see Russians do same with Ukrainians now. As broadcast. And world almost "tired" from noisy Ukrainians and from ignoring their lovely Russians.
Pfft look at prisons in Norway
@@KatieDeGo she said in comparison to Russia. Anywhere in Northern Europe has really relaxed prison systems. 12 year maximum for murder is rediculous
@@KatieDeGo apparently the nicest prison in the world is in norway
You got from a movie lol West Coast, US, resident. Prisonns are not 5 star here.
The weirdest thing about Gulag is this modern tendency to use this word in plural (Gulags). This abbreviation meant "Glavnoye upravlyeniye lageryey" (Main directorate(or administration) of camps), so in Russian it has never been used in plural. Therefore, one may speak of different Gulag camps but not Gulags.
I know that everyone loves painting Adulf Hitler as the face of pure evil but I think that Joseph Stalin was pretty high up there as well.
Yes!
Worst
They’re both equally as bad.
Unfun fact: Prison escapees from the gulag would sometime bring in a random prisoner, not to add an extra companionship to their posse, but to be used as a “calf” (food resource) to help stave off hunger during their long trek across the frozen Russian wilderness.
Jesus rough :/ When people truly are desperate .
Source?
@@nightpandas7178 Drawings from the Gulag by Danzig Baldaev (2005), pg 167
🥴🤢🤮
My ex-girlfriend's Uncle Heinz was a German soldier (in the Wehrmacht) who was captured by the Soviets in the months before the end of WW2 and sent to a Siberian gulag. He was only released in 1953, after Stalin died.
Most soldiers (who were lucky enough to survive that long) were only released in 1953.
И ведь жив остался...
I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as a young teen. I did research on my own (not as part of a school assignment) to learn more about the Gulags as I couldn't believe what I'd read. It is amazing what cruelty humans can inflict and survive. Thanks for this video, Weird History.
It amazes me the Soviet Union lasted as long as it did
It amazes me that the old timers over there right now STILL miss it! :O
@@SoapinTrucker Stockholm syndromes
@@SoapinTrucker yes!! I remember the bread lines on the news when I was younger and they want to go back to that? Wow
@@SoapinTrucker Guess what? Not only "old timers" but the population in general miss it, and over half of Russians view Stalin in a positive light.
Большие очереди начались под конец существования СССР
As a Russian, I grew up hearing nothing but bleak stories of death, starvation, cruelty, and desperation. (F**k Putin)
I think most Slavic people carry centuries of pain starting from the very beginning.
I recommend reading “A world apart” by Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski
it’s his memories from being in a Soviet camp in Yercevo and it shows the horrible conditions, laws of the camp and how people behaved. It’s hard to read knowing it’s not fiction, but definitely worth reading.
And "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich".
I read it as a kid, and it made an impression on me.
Griner learned how to bust rocks this week. 🤣
The photo of the guys pushing the full wheelbarrows up hill got me. Imagine being starved and expected to physically preform like that
I learned of a story in my ussr class that was told by a former Russian police officer. He said they got a call from a tenant that 7 neighbors upstairs were committing un-communist activities. They showed up and found 3 people and arrested them. But they had to get 7 people. They were ordered to go up another floor and just grab 4 people. And that was it. If you didn’t like your neighbors, you could have them taken away, no questions asked. Just being in the same building as somebody suspected of a crime made you a target.
My great grandmother on my mom's side, survived the gulag and came to the US just before the second world war. O believe her husband did as well, but my mom didn't talk about him as much. They had a daughter (my great aunt) named Bessy Bell that shared my birthday, she was 100 years older than me to the day. My fathers family fled Germany and Poland during the war. Fun times for all.
Another book about the Gulags is "With God in Russia" by Walter Ciszek. He was an American-Polish priest who went to Eastern Europe and Russia to try to serve the people as a priest. He describes some of the realities of life in the Gulags and also the limitations of his life and where he lived once he was released.
Thank you for covering this.
Maybe the Holodomour would be a good one, too.
I love that the editor of this video included a picture of Colin Farrell from the film "The Way Back". 🤣🤣
My grandfather was sent to the gulag when he was 5 years old in siberia , but him and my great grandmother escaped and lived in the woods for about 10 years before rescue
Solzhenitsyn‘s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ is essential reading for any human. A very important book.
Gulags: When the Russians told the Germans “Hold my vodka for a few decades.”
Don't forget the kulaks, Ukrainians, jews, Muslims, the Cossacks, the middle class, Priests, Christians, Buddhists, basically every people group that didn't cow tow to the central authorities
Hmm, the Russians didnt have mass industrialized killing. Not an excuse but rather different
Death machine regardless of lack of assembly line and ovens
Really Stalin just wanted to get all the use out of the people before they died due to conditions
The old Russian gulag joke was; Three men talking, first asked why were you sent here!? I wrote a joke about Checkov, and you? I told the joke about Checkov, and you to the third man? I'm Checkov! (Many were sent, no reason!)
Those gulags were really horrible places to live and work in. I remember hearing a dissident Soviet writer speak back in the late 70's. When I asked him what his experiences were like being in a Soviet labor camp, the experiences were so bad that he refused to talk about them.
What sad is many of these prisoners would write letters to Stalin telling him they've been locked up and to help them not knowing Stalin was the one behind it all. He even locked up his own family at one point he was so paranoid!
I have always known how horrible what the kids went through but now that I am a mother thinking about it is even that much more painful. I am so thankful to live the life I live and that I was not born in that era of time ... Ugh terrible
Wow, this wildly undersells how horrible the Gulags were. I haven't seen a horror movie or rendition of hell in fiction that was worse than communist Gulags.
Let that sink in. The communists were absolute horrible at so many things, but the one thing they were especially good at, was creating a deeper hell on earth than you could ever imagine.
There's a reason the Nazis fought so ruthlessly at the end of the war, conscripting children and getting even more rabidly unhinged in their war propaganda. Because they knew the fate that would await them if they surrendered to the Red Army.
(To be fair, if anyone deserved the absolute hell of Soviet gulags it'd be the Nazis.)
Agreed. Do u know of any memoirs that show the full horror of the camps in the stalin era ? Thanks I will read them
@@mango11119 Most is written documents that align with lots and LOTS of testimonials from people who've fled. Gulag Archipelago is just a start. You look at other countries it even gets worse than that.
Your timing is impeccable...
this channel is GREAT.
Can you guys make a video on Cleopatra?
Sergei Korolev, the man behind the USSR's Space endeavor that scores many first in the opening space race against US, is a also a victim of the Gulag. If not for the complications he sustained during his labor years in gulag, he might be able to beat the US in reaching the Moon first.
Or we could've seen an Apollo/Soyuz test around the Moon rather than simply around Earth. Or joint US/USSR Salyut missions.
My Great Grand uncle was sent to Siberia because he was sending out leaflets in Estonia where he urged people to rebel against the occupation
Badass
This channel is a blessing
This will be the US pretty soon so this will help us learn what to expect.
Amazing video!
That could be made into a horror series.
Very, very helpful, thank you for the video.
I can see why my family fled the USSR.
No mention of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his famous writings 'The Gulag Archipelago'. I read that book back in 1978 and it changed my view on how the world really works.
The humorous tone of this video does real disservice to the millions victims of the gulags.
I like how he keeps saying "Stalin, Stalin, Stalin" as if mass slave labor didn't exist under Trotsky or Lenin
..or working poor at McDonalds
@Robert Thomas, right because making $15/hour for bagging fries is literally the same as a gulag.
@@smokingcrab2290 lol!
@@robertthomas4234 You fool
@@smokingcrab2290 y'all ain't no working poor, no sense of humour neither, there upon the high horse of faux empathy for the long dead, innit? You backing the falsehood offered by a sloganeer?
Gulag Archipelago isn’t even mentioned in this video. That’s really important and you let it slide.
hi, your video is great and I'd like to use some of the information you stated for an essay. could you maybe share the list of sources you used for the video?
My maths teacher was born and grew up in these until she was six, she has a book written about it too - never read it but I know that my grandma had one of those in her bookshelf.
Soviet Russia. What a country.
Stalin: Satan incarnate
Can't wait for a bot from a Siberian troll farm to defend the Gulags.
"They weren't THAT bad"
Brother of my great-grandfather was a prisoner in GULAG. He was sent there during WW2, after he was ordered to blow up a bridge, to make Wehrmacht not go through. When he came there - he saw that German soldiers was already there, so he went back. He told about this situation and he was sent to GULAG. We don’t know what happened to him, because my great-grandfather had to change his last name to become more influential in communist party, because they didn’t want “a person, whose last name is being associated with an enemy of the people”.
…”food was always is short supply”. Well, it looks like everything was in short supply except for abuses. I can’t understand how that people had any will to keep on living after having to face such horrible conditions.
It was better than an American prison or an imperial Russian prison. Mortality rates were much higher.
Damn Britney garner gonna have her hands full in that gulag for 9 year !!! Are she gonna survive ? Even if she left this damn they world gonna be another world that’s fk up
This is fascinating! I never knew about true life in the gulag. Thank you so very much
And outright horrifying. It is tragic how little these atrocities are discussed.
My great grandfather was there in Siberia for 10 years, I can't imagine how horrible it was for him losing there also his father & brother 🙏🏻💙 😢
I am baffled Weird History script writers felt compelled to include so many awful jokes between descriptions of arguably the most horrific examples of misery endured by humans. I understand the appeal of gallows humor, but this completely missed the mark. Poor taste, indeed.
I would like to know what it was like being a POW in WWII in a German Stalag. My father was in one from 1943 to 1945 but he would never talk about it.
It was a picnic for Brits and Americans
compared to Gulag..but terrible for Soviet POWs.
Anytime I hear the words backbreaking labor and starvation in the same sentence it is chilling
That “tech start-up” joke just earned you a new subscriber😂
I read the gulug archipelago. It's crazy how he wrote that book. Had to keep parts of it all over the countryside.
Wow. Wow wow. This was so interesting..I never knew this even existed. I guess almost every country had something crazy going on.. probably going to watch that movie asap
My great-grandfather was a communist in Germany. The Nazis arrested him and sent him to the bridge construction commando as a non-swimmer. He was arrested by the Russians in Stalingrad and sent to a labor camp. When he was released, he walked from Russia back home to Germany. After spending a few days with his family, he was taken away by the French. He also returned from France. He never told anyone what he experienced in captivity. He was an opponent of Hitler and never wanted this war and yet he had to experience all this.
I read Gulag Archipelago while in prison for money laundering and smuggling pot. Great book I wish I could spell the author's last name without googling it
"CHERNAIVEhn" haha
good video, man. I kinda dig the Matthew Mcconnaghew voice!
I read Anne Applebaum’s excellent book on the subject. It really puts into perspective how spoiled we are in western society today. These prisoners barely ate 400 calories a day and showered with a bar of “black evil smelling soap” and 1 cup of hot water/1 cup cold.
That book gives clear illustration of horrible life in Gulags, also the book "Resilient Russian women"
Far outdid the Czar in this way. Revolutions often do a 360 degree turn. Takes you around then you are right back in a similar place. The Russian Revolution was one of these.
thats right, of all the revolutions I can think of the Cuban revolution stands out as one that took another direction than the system that preceded it
“Would you have been able to survive in the Gulag?”
Dude, I’m hardly able to survive in my own comfortable home!
A video on the history of Hatshepsut would be so cool
My grandpa was sent to a gulag after he returned home from being a prisoner of war in Germany. Because you were looked at as a "deserter" if you came back. Nearly died. Caught tuberculosis and was being carried out by his hands and feet when someone noticed he was still breathing. He was sick for the rest of his life and eventually died because of it.
Hmmmm.... as a novice historian I have often mused over the fate of the German Army which surrendered at Stalingrad and whose 50+ thousand soldiers trudged off to an imprisonment from which only about 5,000 were repatriated years later. I wonder if there was some part they played in the gulag story. Has anyone ever discovered their actual fate?
I’d think that most would have died with maybe a few escaping or being released at the end of the war.
The book sniper at the gates is a very well historically researched account of the Russians driving the German army out of Stalingrad, leading to the capture of that army and their fate in the gulags. The captured German army suffered a very disturbing fate. Very interesting read
Many were said to have built dachas around Moscow for Soviet Leaders. Apparently, German workmanship was something of a status symbol in Russia.
TIK History RUclips channel will probably get around to it. Most, or at least a reasonably high percentage starved before they could even make it to the Gulag.
My grandfather was one of the 5000 that survived, he didn't share a lot but the 50000 soldiers were made to walk from Stalingrad to the Gulag camps for weeks and the soldiers would help dress the German women up as male soldiers and hid them in the middle as they would get raped by the Soviet soldiers otherwise. The only story in the camp I heard from him was that he and his mates would hoard bread and share the bread on days some of them didn't get any food, which is how they survived. My mother was born 9 months after he came back. He passed away 16 years ago but he and the survivors would meet up once a year for decades.
The story about the family ... i don't have words. This is what love and loyalty is!
My great uncle was a prisoner for 10 years, He fought for the Germans as an ambulance driver. He was a Canadian citizen, but was captured afer the war.
I noticed the image of Stalin was taken from the movie "The death Of Stalin". If any of you haven't seen it, it's worth a look, not only for it's historical content, but it's kinda funny too. Stars include Michael Palin and Steve Buscemi.
That's the first weird history that made me shed tears.
I wonder why no big movies have been made about these events?
Stalin was no better than Hitler. The only reason he's not as reviled as Hitler was because he didn't lose a war.
More importantly he helped the allies win the war, and the winners write history so Stalin wrote himself in as a good guy who fought against Nazis and now that same bs line has been used in Putin's propaganda