Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, and the police and prison system that carried out his orders are the main focus. The people affected by this system include regular citizens, political prisoners, writers, prisoners of war, farmers, ethnic groups, and criminals. Both known and unknown people like camp leaders, secret police officers, tired mothers, workers accused of crimes, and quiet rebels help tell the human side of the story.

Who 

What

The Gulag was a huge system of labor camps and prisons where people were forced to work and were often punished. These camps are places of constant hard labor like mining, cutting trees, and building railroads, along with hunger, cold, and loneliness. They were also used to control people through fear, destroying families and careers.

When

All of this happens on the years right after World War II up to Stalin’s death in 1953, a time when the Soviet Union had won the war but people at home still faced harsh control. In the late 1940s, arrests and purges continued, sending many people to camps. In the early 1950s, some prisoners began to return or were released. After 1953, things became uncertain as the system slowly started to change.

where

It is set in urban and remote places, from the parade-lined streets in Moscow to the farms. The camps were remote across Siberia, the Arctic, the taiga, and northern logging and mining regions. These places were bitter cold with snow making it lethal work.