Gulag

MGB/KGB Ministerstvo/Komitet gosudarstvennoe bezopasnosti (Ministry of/Committee on State Security): secret police in charge of internal and external surveillance in the postwar era

MVD Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del (Ministry of Internal Affairs): secret police in charge of jails and camps in the postwar era

NKVD Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs): secret police during the 1930s and the Second World War, successor to OGPU

OGPU Obedinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (Unified State Political Administration): secret police during the late 1920s and early 1930s, successor to GPU

Okhrana Czarist-era secret police

FOREIGN WORDS AND SOVIET INSTITUTIONS

balanda: prison soup

banya: a Russian steam bath

Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union—Operation Barbarossa—on June 22, 1941

beskonvoinyi: a prisoner who has the right to travel within different camp divisions without an armed guard

besprizornye: Soviet street children. Most were orphans, products of the civil war and collectivization

blatnoi slovo: thieves’ jargon (see urka)

Bolsheviks: the radical faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which under Lenin’s leadership became the Russian Communist Party in 1918

bushlat: a long-sleeved prisoners’ or workers’ jacket lined with cotton wadding

Central Committee: the chief policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In between Party Congresses, it met two or three times a year. When it was not in session, decisions were made by the Politburo, which was technically a body elected by the Central Committee

chifir: extremely strong tea. When ingested, produces something resembling a narcotic high

collectivization: policy of forcing all peasants to abandon private farming, and to pool all of their land and other resources into a collective, pursued from 1929 to 1932. Collectivization created the conditions for the rural famine of 1932–34, and permanently weakened Soviet agriculture

Council of People’s Commissars (or Sovnarkom): theoretically the ruling government body, the equivalent of a ministerial cabinet. In practice, subordinate to the Politburo

Comintern: The Third (Communist International), an organization of the world’s communist parties, formed in 1919 under the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party. The Soviet Union shut it down in 1943

dezhurnaya or dnevalnyi: in normal parlance, a concierge. In a camp, the man or woman who stays behind in the barracks all day, cleaning and guarding against theft

dokhodyaga: someone on the verge of death; usually translated as “goner”

Dom Svidanii: literally “House of Meetings,” where prisoners were allowed to meet their relatives

étap: prisoner transport

feldsher: a medical assistant, sometimes trained and sometimes not

glasnost: literally “openness.” A policy of open debate and freedom of speech launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s

Gulag: from Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei (Main Camp Administration), the secret police division which managed the Soviet concentration camps

Izvestiya: the Soviet government newspaper

Karelia: the Republic of Karelia, in the northwest corner of the Soviet Union, bordering Finland.

katorga: Czarist term for forced labor. During the Second World War, the Soviet regime also adopted the word to describe strict-regime camps for war criminals

kolkhoz: a collective farm. Peasants were forced to work on them after the policy of collectivization was put into practice in 1929–31

kolkhoznik: inhabitant of a kolkhoz

Kolyma: the Kolyma River valley, in the far northeastern corner of Russia, on the Pacific coast. Home to one of the largest camp networks in the USSR

Komi: the Republic of Komi, the northeastern section of European Russia, west of the Ural Mountains. The Komi people are the indigenous inhabitants of the Komi Republic, and speak an Ugro-Finnic language

Komsomol: Communist Party youth organization, for young people ages fourteen to twenty-eight. Younger children belonged to the Pioneers

kontslager: Russian for concentration camp

Kronstadt rebellion: a major uprising against the Bolsheviks, led by the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base, in 1921

kulak: traditionally, a prosperous peasant. In the Soviet era kulak came to mean any peasant accused of opposing Soviet authority or the collectivization policy. Between 1930 and 1933, over two million kulaks were arrested and deported

kum: the camp administrator responsible for managing the informers’ network