With the instillation of the NKVD, Stalin had an organized group that could instill fear into anyone they pleased. There was no one who could be safe from the wrath of the NKVD, even if one was to serve in high ranks of the government or military. This organization would gather up information on party members throughout the Soviet Union. There were representatives of the NKVD in every area of the country, so that Stalin could thus keep his eye on all members of the party, in all locations. “At first its work consisted largely of gathering information from police and party archives on personnel files of party members with oppositional pasts or connections with one or another political grouoping.” Once this network was in place it was much easier to dig up any information on any party member they wanted. Between May and December of 1935, an estimated total of 190,000 party members were expelled. With this one can see how Stalin was able to keep this fear alive in ordinary people and party members throughout the Soviet Union. Another operative of the NKVD was to purge the military and thus sentence them to either death or years of hard work in the gulags. This was also a success, for they received many signed confessions from those military officials claiming that they had been involved in counterevolutionary activity. Thus to many people it may have looked like the NKVD was doing a good job in its apprehension and conviction of many officials in both the party and the military. Yet the means by which the NKVD gained confessions was brutal. “The arrested army chiefs were pressured and physically tortured into willingness to testify that they had been involved in copnspiracy to overthrow the Soviet state.” It was not uncommon for these officials to beat prisoners, and also threaten their lives and the lives of their families.

Once one was assigned a job they were expected to work everyday all day until told to stop. During the normal twelve hour shift, food was distributed twice, yet portions were usually small, unless one was awarded double the rations, which was rare. Sick days were hard to come by and rare in the gulags. One example of this is in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the man in this story reports that he is sick only to be told that he has reported too late and thus cannot be exempt from work. With this one can see that there really was no way of getting out of work in the gulags of Russia. Yet some went to great extremes to try, for there were many who faked illness or injury. One example of this was in Shalamov’s, Kolyma Tales, in which a worker tried to fool a doctor by faking a spinal injury. He went to such extremes that the worker contorted his body so that it looked a though he were injured, he stayed in this posistion for months knowing that he would eventually be sent home, yet eventually it was discovered that he was a faker and thus he went back to the camp.

The amount of labor that one would be issued was based on his or her physical condition and one’s status. Many times when prisoners first came to the camp they would be marched along for miles in the snow, and this was done many times to weed-out the weak in the groups. After this was done, it was not uncommon for a medical inspection to be administered. The main reason for this was to see if one’s muscles were fit for hard labor. “The inspectors looked us over like a herd of cattle, and jotted down remarks in their notebooks.” Once this was complete it was decided where one wo

Some topics in this essay:
Kolyma Tales, Soviet Union, Russia Siberia, Stalinist Russia, Internal Affairs, Nicholas Prychodko’s, Czar Peter’s, Ivan Denisovich, NKVD Stalin, , soviet union, hard labor, read verdict, labor camp, shalamov’s kolyma tales, workers gulags, accused crimes, party throughout, information party, throughout soviet, prychodko’s book, party throughout soviet, throughout soviet union,