The Russian Revolution полностью

The CEC resolutions approving the creation of concentration camps called for detailed instructions to guide their operations. A decree issued on May 12, 1919,¹³⁰ spelled out in meticulous bureaucratic language the constitution of the camps: how they were to be organized, what were the duties and putative rights of the inmates. The decree ordered every provincial capital city to construct a forced labor camp capable of holding 300 or more inmates. Since Soviet Russia had (depending on the shifting fortunes of the Civil War) about thirty-eight provinces, this provision called for facilities for a minimum of 11,400 prisoners. But this figure could be greatly expanded, for the decree authorized also district capital cities to construct concentration camps, and these numbered in the hundreds. Responsibility for organizing the camps was given to the Cheka; after they were in place, authority over them was to pass to the local soviets. This provision, one of many in Bolshevik legislation meant to keep alive the myth that the soviets were “sovereign” organs, was rendered inoperative by the assignment of responsibility for the “general administration” of the camps in Soviet Russia to a newly formed Department of Forced Labor (Otdel Prinuditel’nykh Rabot) of the Commissariat of the Interior, which, as noted, happened to have been headed by the same individual who directed the Cheka.

Russian governments had an old tradition of exploiting convict labor: “In no other country has the utilization of forced labor in the economy of the state itself played as significant a role as in the history of Russia.”¹³¹ The Bolsheviks revived this tradition. Inmates of Soviet concentration camps, from their birth in 1919, had at all times to perform physical labor either inside or outside the place of confinement. “Immediately upon their arrival in the camp,” the instruction read, “all inmates are to be assigned to work and they are to occupy themselves with physical labor throughout their stay.” To encourage camp authorities to exploit prison labor to the fullest, as well as to save the government money, it was stipulated that the camps had to be fully self-supporting:

The costs of running the camp and the administration, when there is a full complement of inmates, must be covered by the inmates’ labor. The responsibility for deficits will be borne by the administration and the inmates in accord with rules stipulated in a separate instruction.*

Attempts to escape from the camps were subject to severe punishments: for a first attempt, a recaptured prisoner could have his sentence prolonged as much as ten times; for a second, he was to be turned over to a Revolutionary Tribunal, which could sentence him to death. To further discourage escapes, the camp authorities were empowered to institute “collective responsibility” (krugovaia poruka), which made fellow inmates accountable for each other. In theory, an inmate had the right to complain of mistreatment in a book kept for the purpose.

Thus, the modern concentration camp was born—an enclave within which human beings lost all rights and became slaves of the state. In this connection, the question may arise as to the difference between the status of an inmate in a concentration camp and that of an ordinary Soviet citizen. After all, no one in Soviet Russia enjoyed personal rights or had recourse to law, and everyone could be ordered, under decrees providing for compulsory labor, to work wherever the state wanted. The line separating freedom from imprisonment in the Soviet Russia of that time was indeed blurred. For example, in May 1919, Lenin decreed the mobilization of labor for military construction on the southern front.¹³² He stipulated that the mobilized work force was to consist “primarily of prisoners as well as citizens confined to concentration camps and sentenced to hard labor.” But if these were insufficient, the decree called for pulling “into the labor obligation also local inhabitants.” Here, camp inmates were distinguished from ordinary, “free” citizens only by being the first to be drafted for forced labor. Even so, significant differences separated the two categories. Citizens not confined to camps normally lived with their families and had access to the free market to supplement their rations, whereas camp inmates could have only occasional visits from relatives and were forbidden to receive food packages. Ordinary citizens did not live, day in and day out, under the watchful eyes of the commandant and his assistants (often Communist trusties), who were held responsible for squeezing enough labor from their charges to cover their own salaries as well as the costs of running the camp. Also, they were not quite so liable to be punished, under the practice of “collective responsibility,” for the actions of others.