The canal that was built is now used for industrial and commercial use.
In around 1923, the Gulag started. Besides this there were many other significant things happening in history, such as the Holocaust lead by Adolf Hitler and the Cold War, fought between the Soviet Union and the United States. There are many similarities between the Gulag and the Holocaust. First, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were the main figureheads for the Gulag and the Holocaust. These two people both made prison and labor camps for the people they either disliked, the Jews or the Russian for punishment. One difference between these two was that in the Holocaust, Hitler commanded the Jews to be mass executed, he did this by putting people in the gas chambers when they arrived at camps. In the Gulag the purpose of these camps was forced labor. Stalin wanted to get many things accomplished, especially a Baltic to White Sea Canal, this was one of their main achievements. (GULAG: Many Days, Many Lives). Like the many other prison or labor camps, hard work came with little to no food and no pay. In many interviews and writings of victims, they all talked about the malnourishment and how bad the living conditions were. When it was time to eat, you only earned your food by how much you worked, meaning that if you didn’t work well because you were sick and couldn’t eat, you wouldn’t get more food. (GULAG: Many Days, Many Lives). The main components of a prisoner's diet were bread and soup. Varlam Shalamov, a Gulag prisoner said, “"Each time they brought in the soup... it made us all want to cry. We were ready to cry for fear that the soup would be thin. And when a miracle occurred and the soup was thick we couldn’t believe it and ate it as slowly as possible. But even with thick soup in a warm stomach there remained a sucking pain; we’d been hungry for too long.” (Varlam Shalamov). In this quote the speaker says that even when the soup was somewhat hearty it was not enough to cure their hunger. Another way that these prisoners were mistreated was in their living conditions. Many victims describe their barracks as “disease filled” and “ill-smelling mass”. (GULAG: Living in the Gulag) The barracks were also very cold in the winters and blazing hot in the summer, this is because of the poor choices of clothing. The prisoners were given a thick jacket in the winter to go over a thin shirt and either a thin pair of pants or a skirt for the women. This made it extremely difficult to maintain a good body temperature when the conditions are so severe. (GULAG: Living in the Gulag)It wasn’t necessarily that hard to get into these camps, if someone who worked for the government saw you in the streets giving bread to prisoners then you would become one. (BBC GULAG Documentary). Another common way of being put into camp was criticizing or talking bad about the government in any way. Article 58, stated that if you were anti-soviet in any way that you would be placed in prison. The two people who chose to take a stand against Stalin and the Gulag were affected by Article 58. (Criminal Code).
Above is the daily food rations of a prisoner in the Gulag System.
This is the jacket that the prisoners would get as well as pants and a shirt.
These are the barracks that would be described as "ill-smelling" and "disease filled"