How was the Gulag related to the Five-Year Plans?
a. many workers and peasants were sent to the Gulag, the prison labor camps, under the Five-Year Plans
b. the Gulag was the state planning organization that created the Five-Year Plans
c. many workers and peasants were released from the Gulag in order to achieve the economic goals of the first Five-Year Plan
d. the Gulag was the name of the man-made famine that killed many peasants in Ukraine who opposed collectivization under the Five-Year Plan

The correct answer is letter A

Gulag is an acronym, in Russian, for Central Field Administration. These were prisoner camps where inmates were punished with forced labor, physical and psychological torture.

The term “Gulag” was popularized in the West thanks to the book “Archipelago Gulag”, by the Russian writer Alexander Soljenítsin, published in 1973, in Paris.

Forced labor camps have existed since the Russian Empire. However, with the fall of the monarchy and the rise of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the system of concentration camps was extended to the most remote regions of the country.

The Gulags had their peak in the Stalin government between 1929-1953 and went into decline after the death of the Soviet dictator. However, they were only officially abolished under the Gorbachev government in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union began to open up to the world.

Initially, people considered “enemies of the people” were sent to the Gulags. The first oilcloths of prisoners belonged to specific classes such as the bourgeois, priests, landowners and monarchists. There were also those who were suspected only of their origins as Jews, Chechens and Georgians.