Chapter 27 Chapter 1 Aurora's Finger

Eos, of whom Homer so often speaks, the goddess of morning whom the Romans called Aphrodite, touched the first dawn of the archipelago with her rosy fingers. When my compatriots heard from the broadcast of the British Broadcasting Corporation that M. Mikhailov discovered that there were concentration camps in our country as early as 1921, many people (and many people in the West) were shocked: Could it be that so early?Did it exist in 1921? Of course not!Of course Mikhailov was mistaken.In fact, in 1921 the concentration camp was at its peak (or even nearing its end. It would be far more accurate to say that the archipelago was born to the sound of the guns of the Aurora cruiser.

Could it be otherwise?Let's think about it for a moment. Didn't Marx and Lenin teach that the old bourgeois machinery of coercion must be destroyed and a new one must be erected immediately in its place?The machinery of coercion includes: the army (we are not surprised by the establishment of the Red Army in early 1918); the police (the civilian police were rebuilt before the army was established); existence); and prisons.When the dictatorship of the proletariat is being established, how can the establishment of a new type of prison be done slowly? In short, with regard to prison affairs, no matter whether it is new or old, one cannot take his time.Already in the first months after the October Revolution, Lenin demanded: "the most resolute and severe measures of discipline." And could severe measures be achieved without prisons?

What new things can the proletarian state offer in this respect?Ilich is groping for new avenues.In December 1917, as a preliminary idea, he proposed a set of punishment methods: "Anyone who does not obey this decree...confiscate all his property...and be imprisoned or sent to the front for forced labor." According to this We may point out that the dominant idea of ​​the archipelago, that of forced labor, was developed within the first month after the October Revolution. While Ilyich sat peacefully in the fragrant and lush meadows of Razlev listening to the humming of the pimple bees, he could not help thinking about the future of the penal system.Already at that time he had weighed the matter and asked us to relax because: "It is easier, simpler and more natural for the majority, who yesterday were wage-slaves, to suppress the exploiting minority. Much less blood will be shed than the suppression of the many by the few, and the human race will pay a much smaller price for it."

So how much has this "easier" domestic repression since the October Revolution cost us?According to the calculations of I. A. Kurganov, a professor of statistics in exile, from 1917 to 1959, not counting the war deaths, but only counting the deaths due to terrorism, suppression, and starvation, And the higher than normal death rate in the labor camps, including the population deficit due to the lower than normal birth rate, we paid the price of... 66 million people (55 million without the aforementioned deficit). Sixty-six million people!Fifty-five million people! Whether it's your own or someone else's -- who doesn't feel numb all over?

Of course we cannot vouch for the accuracy of Professor Kurganov's figures, but we do not have official figures.As long as the official figures are published, experts can compare the two critically. (Several research articles have now appeared using concealed and scrambled Soviet statistics -- but the sheer number of victims remains staggering.) It is also interesting to cite a few more figures for comparison.The Third Department of the Tsarist Russian Gendarmerie, which people are talking about, once bound the great Russian literary troupe like a rope, but how big is its central agency?There were sixteen people when it was founded, and forty-five people in its heyday.That's a ludicrous figure for any Chekist in the most remote province.Another example: How many political prisoners were found in the February Revolution in the "prisons of various nationalities" in Tsarist Russia? (It should be remembered that "dispossessors," looters, and political murderers were also classified as political prisoners at the time.) All these numbers are stored somewhere.About fifty prisoners of this kind were held in Krest Prison alone, as well as sixty-three in Schlüsselburg, and several hundred returned from the Siberian penal colonies and penal camps (Alexander Rovsk Central Prison released about 200 people), and there are still some of them squatting in every provincial prison!But how many do you want to know?Look at the figures for the Tambov Province, taken from the local vehement newspapers.After the February Revolution opened the doors of the Tembov prison, political prisoners were found inside... seven of them.In Irkutsk there were much more - twenty people. (We don't need to remind everyone: from February to July 1917 there were no arrests for political reasons, and after July very few people were imprisoned, and the conditions were extremely lenient.)

However, troubles were encountered at this time: the first Soviet government was a coalition government, and part of the People's Commissariat had to be handed over to the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Judicial People's Commissariat unfortunately fell into their hands.This People's Commissariat of Justice, acting according to the rotten petty-bourgeois concept of freedom, almost brought the penal system of our country to the brink of collapse.It passed uncharacteristically light sentences, and almost refused to implement the advanced principle of hard labor.In February 1918, Comrade Lenin, chairman of the People's Committee, called for an increase in the number of places of imprisonment and intensified criminal repression. Add another ten years of forced labor, for a total of twenty years.Such a sentencing standard may make people feel pessimistic at first: Will forced labor still be needed twenty years from now?But we now know that forced labor was a very vigorous practice, and it will still be very popular even fifty years later.

For several months after the October Revolution, the administrators of prisons in various places were still the same as in the Tsarist era, and the only newcomers sent were the political commissars of the prisons.Brazen wardens formed their own trade unions ("prison unions") and introduced elections in prison administration!Not to be outdone, the prisoners also practiced internal self-government. (Decree of the People's Commissariat of Justice April 24, 1918: Wherever possible, prisoners should be attracted to participate in self-control and self-control.) This free grouping of prisoners ("the looseness of anarchism ") naturally do not meet the needs of the tasks of the dictatorship of the advanced classes and are not conducive to the work of eradicating pests from the Russian land. (Think of it, if the prison churches had not been closed, and our Soviet prisoners happily ran there every Sunday, even to relax!)

Of course, even the jailers of the tsarist era were not all useless to the proletariat.In any case, it is a profession that is very important for the realization of the near-term goals of the revolution.Therefore, the task at that time was to "select from among the prison administrators those old habits of Tsarist Russian prisons that have not yet reached the level of insensitivity and obstinacy (what does "not yet" mean? How to identify? Just forget "God Save the Tsar"?") And it is possible Save for new tasks (eg, anyone who can snap back to their boss with a "Yes, sir!", "No, sir!" or pick a lock quickly, qualifies, right?)".As for the prison buildings, cells, iron windows and door locks, although they are still the same on the surface, they have actually acquired brand-new class content and lofty revolutionary significance.

However, until the middle of 1918, various courts still followed the habit of blindly writing words such as "imprisonment" and "imprisonment" in the verdicts.This slows down progress in the dismantling of the old state machinery in the prison sphere. In the middle of 1918, on July 6th to be exact, an event occurred whose significance not everyone understood.It was ostensibly called the "Suppression of the Rebellion of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries," but it was in fact a coup d'état no less important than the October 25th.On October 25, the establishment of a "Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Representatives" was announced, hence the name "Soviet Power".But the composition of this regime is still very cloudy, because there are representatives of other parties besides the Bolsheviks.Although the members of the coalition government consisted of only two parties, the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, there were social groups in the several (second, third, and fourth) National Congresses of Soviets and among the members of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee elected by the congresses. Representatives of the Revolutionary Party, Social Democratic Party, Anarchists, People's Socialist Party, and other socialist parties.Therefore, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee also has the nature of an extremely unhealthy "socialist parliament".During the first months of 1918, as a result of a series of decisive measures (supported by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries), representatives of other socialist parties were expelled from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (according to the organization itself, a unique parliamentary procedure), or be disqualified altogether.The last remaining party with a third of the seats in Parliament (the Fifth Congress of Soviets) was the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party.But the time has come to get rid of them too.On July 6, 1918, all of them were purged from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and People's Commissars.In this way, the regime of the "Soviet of Workers and Peasants' Deputies" (still traditionally called "Soviet Power") could no longer defy the will of the Bolshevik Party, and from then on it took the form of a new democracy.

It is only from this historic date that the transformation of the old prison machinery and the establishment of the archipelago can really begin. As for the direction of this hoped-for transformation, that was already clear.Marx pointed out in "The Critique of the Gotha Program" that productive labor is the only means of reforming prisoners.Of course, Vyshinsky explained much later, "it is not the kind of mentally draining labor" but "the labor of a magician (!) that turns empty and insignificant people into heroes." Why should our prisoners not gossiping or flipping through books in their cells but working?That is because forced idleness, "forced parasitism" cannot be tolerated in the Soviet Republic.This phenomenon can only exist under parasitic institutions, as in Schlüsselburg, for example.If prisoners are allowed to live such an idle life, it directly violates the basic principle of the labor system of the Soviet Republic stipulated in the Constitution of July 10, 1918: "He who does not work shall not eat."Therefore, if prisoners are not allowed to participate in labor, their rations will be deprived in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.

In May 1918, after the signing of the "Brest Peace Treaty" by the Central Bureau of Punishment of the People's Commissariat of Justice, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party withdrew from the government, and the People's Commissariat of Justice was presided over by the Bolsheviks.As soon as it was established, the inmates at that time were immediately moved to work ("start organizing productive labor").However, this practice was officially announced in the form of legislation after the July coup, that is, the "Temporary Regulations on Deprivation of Liberty" issued on July 23, 1918.This order remained in effect throughout the Civil War until November 192. "Anyone who is deprived of liberty and has the ability to work must engage in compulsory physical labor." The emergence of labor camps and the birth of the archipelago can be said to have started from this decree of July 23, 1918 (nine months after the October Revolution). (Who would blame it for being premature?) At the Seventh All-Soviet Congress, the necessity of forced labor on prisoners was stated again (actually there is no need to explain it at this time, it is already very clear): "Labor is the corrosive effect of counteracting the endless conversations among prisoners ... It is the best way to do this. It is this kind of conversation that the experienced prisoner uses to instigate the novice." This was followed by the launch of the "Communist Saturday Voluntary Labor" campaign.So the People's Commissariat of Justice issued another call: "(Prisoners) must be made to develop communist and collective labor habits." In this way, even the compulsory labor camps must implement the spirit of "communist Saturday voluntary labor" up. In that hurried era, piles of tasks were put forward at once, so that people could not figure it out for decades. The rationale for the reform-through-labor policy was written into the new party program at the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (March 1919).The establishment of the labor camp network in Soviet Russia is completely consistent with the earliest communist Saturday voluntary labor (April 12 to May 17, 1919).The date of adoption of several resolutions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on forced labor is April 15 and May 17, 1919. The resolution stipulates that: Forced labor camps can be established in cities or monasteries, or in suburban manors) and in some counties (not all counties for the time being).The capacity of each camp should not be less than three hundred (in order to recover the cost of security and administration from the labor of the prisoners) and should be under the jurisdiction of the Provincial Department of Corrections. However, the forced labor camps are still not the first camps in the Russian Federation.The reader has already encountered the word "concentration camp" several times in the judgments of the Revolutionary Tribunal (Part I, Chapter VIII).Maybe you will think this is our clerical error?Think we're flippantly using terminology that came later?wrong. In August 1918, at. A few days before Kaplan's assassination, Vladimir Ilyich was calling Eugenia Bosh (the fate of the entire Pinza province was then entrusted to - by the Central Committee and the PKC - this now A woman who has been forgotten.) In the telegram of the Executive Committee of Pinza Province, it was written; "Suspicious elements (not "criminals", but "suspicious elements!"--author's note) were detained in concentration camps outside the city. (Also "...relentless mass terror..." -- and this was before the Red Terror Act.) On September 5, 1918, ten days after the above-mentioned telegram, the Decree of the People's Commissars of Red Terror signed by Petrovsky, Kursky and Bunch-Brujevich was promulgated.In addition to mass executions, the decree specifically mentions: "The use of concentration camp isolation methods to protect the Soviet Republic from class enemies." It turns out that the term concentration camp was invented here and was immediately adopted and fixed.It was a major term of the twentieth century that later became popular internationally.The time it appeared turned out to be August and September of 1918.This term was used during the First World War.But only with prisoners of war and unwanted foreigners.Here it is applied to the citizens of the country for the first time.The diversion of the word is quite understandable: a prisoner-of-war concentration camp is not a prison, but a necessary preventive concentration of these people.Isn't what we need to do now is the extra-legal preventive concentration of the nationals?Lenin's nimble mind had only to imagine the barbed wire surrounding a crowd of unconvicted people, and in passing to find a needed word - concentration. But that is exactly what the head of the revolutionary court-martial wrote: "Concentration camp confinement has the character of isolating prisoners of war." This is, frankly speaking: taking them as captured prisoners, with all the hallmarks of an act of war--only against Only the people of the country. If the forced labor camps of the People's Commissariat of Justice belong to ordinary places of imprisonment, then the concentration camps are by no means "ordinary places".It is a place directly under the jurisdiction of the Cheka to detain special hostile elements and hostages. Of course, some of those who were later imprisoned in concentration camps were tried by the revolutionary court; It's just rooted in hostile characteristics.Fleeing from a concentration camp increases the sentence (again without court) tenfold! (Keep in mind that the loud slogans at that time were: "Ten people make one person!" "A hundred people make one person!".) Therefore, if someone's original sentence of five years was caught after escaping, the sentence would be automatically extended to one year. Nineteen sixty-eight years.Fleeing from the concentration camp again, he should be shot according to the regulations (of course, this article was strictly implemented). Concentration camps were established in Ukraine relatively late, starting in 1920. But the roots of the camp are buried deeper and deeper than this, but we can no longer find their location and traces.No one can tell us what happened in most of the earliest concentration camps.We can only salvage a little material based on some testimonies of the last survivors of those battalions. At that time, the authorities were used to setting up concentration camps inside monasteries: there were strong and tight walls, solid buildings, and they were all idle (monastics were not counted as people, and they could be kicked out at any time).So the concentration camps in Moscow were located in Andronik; Novospass, Ivanov and other monasteries.A report in the Petrograd "Red Daily" of September 6, 1918 reported that the first concentration camp "will be located in an unused monastery in the city of Nizhny Novgorod . Thousands go to Nizhny Novgorod concentration camp" (emphasis added by me - author's note). In Ryazan, the concentration camp was also set up in a former convent (Kazan monastery).I heard the following about this concentration camp.Those held there included businessmen, priests, and "prisoners of war" (former officers who had not served in the Red Army were called "prisoners of war" after they were captured).But there are also people who don't know which category to belong to (the Tolstoyan I. Ye-v, whom we already know, also enters).In the camp there were workshops for weaving, sewing, bootmaking, etc., as well as "general labor" (as it was called in 1921).Prisoners also went to the city to complete repairs and construction work.They are escorted to and from work, but individual craftsmen do not need to be escorted, and they are released to work individually according to different types of work.The common people treat these people with delicious food at home.The citizens of Ryazan took great sympathy for these "dispossessed elements" (their official name was "deprived of liberty", not prisoners), and as the procession of these people passed by, they gave them alms (dried rusk, boiled beets roots, potatoes).The escort team did not prevent them from accepting alms. The "dispossessors" divide what they gain among themselves. (None of these actions are in line with our habits, our thinking.) Some "expropriation elements" are arranged in units that match their profession (Ye-fu is arranged in the railway system), this is the luckiest, They were given passes to travel around the city (returning to camp to sleep at night). The food in the camp was (1921): half a pound of bread a day (after the production quota was completed, another half pound was added), boiled water in the morning and evening, and a large spoonful of vegetable soup at noon (there were dozens of grains of cereal and some potato skins). Life in the camp was punctuated by detailed official informers (and arrests based on them) on the one hand, and theater and choir troupes on the other. The "dispossession elements" held concerts for Ryazan residents in the hall of the former Australian Noble Club, and their brass band played in the city garden. The "expropriation elements" became more and more familiar with the local residents and got closer to an intolerable level.At this time, the authorities began to send "prisoners of war" to the "Northern Special Battalion". The lesson of the concentration camp's lack of security and austerity is that it is surrounded by civilian life.Hence the need for the northern special camps (the concentration camps were abolished in 1922). This is the dawn of the camp, and it deserves a closer look at its shifting hues. The two labor corps founded by Trotsky had to be disbanded after the civil war because of the complaints of the soldiers who were reluctantly left in them.But the role of labor camps in the structure of the Russian Federation, far from being gradually weakened by this move, has been strengthened.At the end of 1920, there were eighty-four labor camps in the Russian Federation, distributed in forty-three provinces.If official statistics are to be believed (although these figures are also classified), there were a total of 25,336 interned in these labor camps, in addition to 24,400 "prisoners of the civil war".Both of the above figures, especially the latter, appear to have shrunk.However, these figures may also be accurate if it is taken into account that the statistics were repeatedly restarted from zero due to so-called "prison offloading", scuttling of barges and other mass extermination of detainees.All shortfalls were subsequently filled. The early labor camps seem elusive to us today.No one who was imprisoned there seemed to have ever told outsiders what was going on there: there was no evidence whatsoever.When literary works and memoirs talk about military communism, they only mention executions and prisons, but there is no description of labor camps at all.You can't read between the lines, or read between the lines, to get a hint of the labor camps.So Mikhailov was naturally going to be mistaken.Where are these camps?What's the name?what does it look like ... The Decree of July 23, 1918 has a decisive flaw (which all jurists can point out).It says nothing about the class distinctions of prisoners.That is to say, there is no suggestion that one category of prisoners should be treated better and another category of prisoners should be treated worse.But it prescribes the labor regime, which is the only basis on which we can imagine conditions in the camps.The work schedule is set at eight hours.However, due to the novelty of the matter, the decision was made in a feverish manner: for any labor performed by prisoners, except for in-camp services, they will be paid according to the piece-rate wages of the corresponding trade union... (horrifying! Difficult to write!) 100% remuneration! (You are forced to work according to the constitution, and you are paid according to the constitution, what else can you say?) Of course, labor camp maintenance and guard salaries are deducted from wages. "Good behavior" was given preferential treatment, could live in private housing, and only came to work in the camp.Those who are "particularly active in labor" are promised to be released early.But in general, there are no detailed instructions on the management system, and each labor camp actually does its own thing. "During the period when the new regime was being built and in view of the extreme overcrowding of the places of imprisonment, it was impossible to consider the question of the management of the labor camps (!--emphasis added by me--author's note), since all attention was devoted to In terms of reducing the burden on the prison." Reading these words is like reading a section of Babylonian cuneiform script.Questions immediately pop up: What's the matter with those hapless prisons? "Our prisons are poorly ordered... even the shortest incarceration becomes torture." What are the social causes of this overcrowding? "Reducing the burden"--should it be understood as shooting or spreading to labor camps? What does "impossible to consider the problem of labor camp management system" mean?This means that the People's Commissariat of Justice has no time to protect prisoners from the wanton abuses of the local labor camp commanders.Is it the only way to understand it?Without the detailed rules of the management system, then, in the era of "revolutionary legal awareness", every local emperor in a labor camp can run a school as the prisoner likes to do? From some rough statistics (all extracted from the same "Collected Works"), we learn that the labor camps consisted essentially of clumsy manual labor.In 1919, prisoners working in handicraft workshops accounted for only 2.5 percent of the total, while in 1992 they accounted for 10 percent.We also learn that at the end of 1918, the Central Penal Service (listen to the name! Doesn’t it make your hair stand on end?) was busy setting up agricultural labor camps; Chemical house plumbing repair team. (Prisoners of this type were obviously not escorted. They took wrench, soldering iron, and various pipes to and fro the streets of Moscow and the corridors of government buildings; they went in and out of the residences of the big men at that time. If the wife of the headmaster called If someone fixes it. --Such a scene has not been written into a memoir, a script, or a film.) What if there are no such experts among the prisoners?It can be concluded that some will be caught from the outside. In his report to the Tenth Congress of the Soviets, Comrade E. Schilvent, the head of all prisons in the Russian Federation, who has fortunately survived, gives us further information on the situation in the prison-reformation system in 1922.All the prisons of the People's Commissariat of Justice and the People's NKVD were merged for the first time in this year into the General Directorate of Prison Management, which came under the wing of Comrade Dzerzhinsky. (Under another wing of his there were already the prisons of the State Political Security Service, and he still wanted to manage everything in this area as if he was too full.) The General Administration of Prisons has three hundred and thirty departments. The total number of persons deprived of liberty in prisons is 80,000 to 81,000, an increase compared to 1992. "The population of prisons has indeed continued to increase this year."But we can see from this same book (page 40) that together with the State Political Security Bureau, the number of prisoners was never less than 150,000, and sometimes reached 195,000. "Populations in places of imprisonment are becoming more and more stable" (p. 10), "the percentage of persons listed as subjects of the Revolutionary Tribunals, far from declining, has shown a certain upward trend" (p. 13).And in the areas where popular disturbances occurred not long ago - the central black earth provinces, Siberia, the banks of the Don River, the North Caucasus, the number of people under investigation accounted for 41 to 43 per cent of the total number of detainees, which proves that Good prospects for the development of labor camps. In 1922, under the jurisdiction of the General Directorate of Places of Incarceration, there were: reformatory labor institutes (i.e. prisons serving sentences), detention centers (i.e. investigation prisons), deportation, quarantine, and isolation prisons (Orel Prison "can't accommodate all prisoners who are difficult to rehabilitate" , restored the "Crest" prison, which so honorably opened its doors in February 1917), the labor camp (digging bushes and roots, using human power), the labor camp for young adults, and the concentration camps.It can be described as a well-developed punishment business!In prisons, "six more persons are required for every five vacancies, and there are many institutions where more than three persons are accommodated per vacancy" (p. 8). We can also know the state of the buildings (prisons and labor camps): they are so dilapidated that even the most basic hygiene requirements cannot be met, "to such an extent that they cannot be used, so that the whole building and even the whole reformatory have to be closed" (p. 17).With regard to food, "the situation in the prisons in 1921 was difficult: the prisoners did not have adequate quantities of food." It was almost disastrous" (page 2), and the provincial executive committees refused to even give the detainees full rations.At the beginning of the year, the State Planning Commission allocated 150,000 to 155,000 detainees 100,000 food rations. The food standard was lowered, and some food was not distributed at all (three-quarters of the detainees received less than 100,000 calories). 1,500 calories), and from December 1, 1922, except for fifteen nationwide, the supply of rations to all places of imprisonment was basically cancelled. "The imprisoned are starving" (p. 41). The country really wants to have an archipelago, but there is nothing for it to eat! The price of labor compensation has fallen. "Supplies of supplies are extremely unsatisfactory . . . and projected to be catastrophic" (p. 42). "The lack of fuel was felt almost everywhere." The death rate in October 1922 was no less than one percent in the GD system.That means more than six per cent will die in one winter -- maybe ten per cent? This cannot but be reflected in security work. "Most of the guards simply ran away from work, and some speculated and traded with the incarcerated" (p. 3) -- how much more would they exploit! "Surge in job-related crimes driven by hunger".Many travel to better-paying jobs. "In some reformatories there was only one superintendent and one warden left" (how incompetent as one can imagine), so "model incarcerated persons had to be recruited as wardens". What Dzerzhinsky's spiritual strength and confidence in the communist cause of punishment must be possessed in bringing this dying archipelago back home, but dragging it into a bright future! How is the result?October 1923 - already at the beginning of the sunny New Economic Policy era (and still far from the period of the Personality Superstition), the number of detainees was: 335 deprived of freedom in the labor camps 68,297; 48,163 in 207 reformatory institutions; 16,765 in 105 detention centers and prisons There are a total of 2,328 people in the 35 reform-through-labor farms, and there are another 1,041 minors and sick people. And all this without counting the prisons of the Political Security Service!What a delightful growth!The disheartened are disgraced.The Party was right again: not only did the detainees not die, but their numbers almost doubled, and the prisons more than doubled, without collapsing. There is also a very telling statistic about overcrowding in the labor camps (inmates are growing faster than the camps are being formed).The actual capacity of the 100th vacant seat was 112 in 1924; 120 in 1925; 132 in 1926 ; 1927 - 177 people. Anyone who has squatted in it himself knows very well how life in the camp is if one vacant seat needs to accommodate 1.77 prisoners (including bunks empty seats in the cafeteria, rice bowls in the canteen, cotton vests issued in the camp, etc.). Through the development of the labor camp system, a valiant "struggle" was waged against "prison fetishism" in all countries of the world, including the earlier Russian . (“The tsarist government, which had turned the country into one great prison, developed its prison system with a peculiarly vicious sadism.”) Although before 1924 there were still very few ordinary labor camps in the archipelago.The main proportion in those years was closed prisons.There has been no reduction in the future.In his 1924 report Krylenko called for an increase in the number of special isolation facilities for detaining non-workers and particularly dangerous elements of the workforce. (Krylenko himself later apparently became such an element.) This formulation of his was written verbatim in the Labor Reform Law of 1924. At the beginning of the "construction period" (meaning from 1927 onwards), "the role of the labor camps ... (What do you think? Now, after all the victories have been won?) ... Intensified every day - against the most dangerous hostile elements, assassins, rich peasants, counter-revolutionary propaganda." In short, the archipelago will not sink to the bottom of the sea, the archipelago will exist! As is the case with any archipelago, some invisible movement of certain supporting formations precedes the appearance of the ground before our eyes.During the formation of our archipelago there have also been changes and changes of name of the utmost importance which our intellect can scarcely comprehend.At first it was the chaotic state of creation: the place of confinement was headed by three houses - the Cheka (Comrade Dzerzhinsky), the Cheka (Comrade Dzerzhinsky), the NKVD (Petrov Comrade), People's Commissariat of Justice (Comrade Kursky).The competent authority on the part of the NKVD was sometimes the "General Administration of Places of Penitentiary" (established immediately after the October Revolution of 1917), sometimes the General Administration of Forced Labor, and sometimes the General Administration of Prisons.The competent authority on the part of the People's Commissariat of Justice was the Prison Administration (December 1917), and later the Central Department of Corrections (May 1918), under which were the Departments of Corrections in the provinces, and even provincial Congress held at the Department (November 1920).It was later changed to a nice name, the Central Labor Reform Bureau (1921).Needless to say, this kind of multi-pronged leadership is not good for the corrections cause.Dzerzhinsky was committed to achieving unified management.It just so happened that at this time something happened that few people noticed, that is, the combination of the NKVD and the All-Russian Cheka.Dzerzhinsky concurrently served as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs from March 16, 1919.In 1922, he achieved his goal - the People's Commissariat of Justice handed over all places of detention to his NKVD (June 25, 1922). Parallel to this, the security system of the labor camps was being reorganized.First it was the Internal Guard of the Republic, and later it was the Internal Service.In 1919 it was merged with the All-Russian Soviet Corps, and Dzerzhinsky concurrently served as the chairman of the Military Commission of this force. （尽管这样，直到一九二四年，有关逃亡事件的频繁，有关工作人员纪律废弛的状况，如酗酒、玩忽职守、只拿钱不办事之类，仍听到不少批评）到一九二四年六月才依照全俄中执委和人民委员会联合发布的法令，在押解警卫部队里实行了军事纪律，由海军人民委员部给这支部队补充了兵员。 与此同时，于一九二二年成立了中央指纹登记局和中央役犬及警犬繁育场。 在此期间，苏联监狱管理总局改称为苏联劳改机关管理总局，不久以后又改称为国家政治保卫局下属的劳动改造营管理总局。该局的局长同时担任苏联押解警卫部队的司令员。 这里面包含着多少大动荡啊！牵涉到多少处的楼梯、办公室、哨兵、通行证、印章、招牌啊！ 监狱管理总局之子--劳动改造营管理总局就是我们今天的古拉格（劳改营管理总局）的前身。