gulags

listen to the pronunciation of gulags
الإنجليزية - الإنجليزية
plural of gulag
gulag
A generic name for the system of all Soviet prison camps
gulag
A prison camp
gulag
A gulag is a prison camp where conditions are extremely bad and the prisoners are forced to work very hard. The name gulag comes from the prison camps in the former Soviet Union. one of a group of prison camps in the former USSR, where conditions were very bad (Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitel'no-trudovykh Lagerei ). System of Soviet labour camps and prisons that from the 1920s to the mid-1950s housed millions of political prisoners and criminals. The term (an abbreviation of the Russian words for Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps) was largely unknown in the West until the 1973 publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The Gulag consisted of hundreds of camps, under the control of the secret police, where prisoners felled timber, worked in the mines, or laboured on construction projects. At least 10% died each year from harsh working conditions, inadequate food, and summary executions. The Gulag reached its height in the years of collectivization of Soviet agriculture (1929-32), during Joseph Stalin's purges (1936-38), and immediately after World War II, shrinking only after Stalin's death in 1953. An estimated 15-30 million Russians died in the camps
gulag
a Russian prison camp for political prisoners
gulag
{i} prison or labor camp in former Soviet Union used for political prisoners; prison or forced labor camp for political dissenters