Gulag

In fact—contrary to popular belief—foreigners in this era described Soviet prison camps rather frequently. Quite a lot was generally known in the West about the Soviet concentration camps at the end of the 1920s, perhaps more than was generally known at the end of the 1940s. Large articles about Soviet prisons had appeared in the German, French, British, and American press, particularly the left-wing press, which had wide contacts among imprisoned Russian socialists.² In 1927, a French writer named Raymond Duguet published a surprisingly accurate book about Solovetsky, Un Bagne en Russie Rouge (A Prison in Red Russia), describing everything from the personality of Naftaly Frenkel to the horrors of the mosquito torture. S. A. Malsagov, a Georgian White Army officer who managed to escape from Solovetsky and cross the border, published Island Hell, another account of Solovetsky, in London in 1926. As a result of widespread rumors about Soviet abuse of prison labor, the British Anti-Slavery Society even launched an investigation into the matter, and wrote a report deploring the evidence of scurvy and maltreatment.³ A French senator wrote a much-quoted article based on the testimony of Russian refugees, comparing the situation in the Soviet Union to the findings of the League of Nations’ slavery investigation in Liberia. ⁴

The White Sea Canal, northern Russia, 1932–1933

After the expansion of the camps in 1929 and 1930, however, foreign interest in the camps shifted, moving away from the fate of the socialist prisoners, and focusing instead on the economic menace which the camps appeared to pose to Western business interests. Threatened companies, and threatened trade unions, began organizing. Pressure grew, particularly in Britain and the United States, for a boycott of cheaper Soviet goods allegedly produced by forced labor. Paradoxically, the movement for a boycott clouded the whole issue in the eyes of the Western Left, which still supported the Russian Revolution, particularly in Europe, even if many of the leaders were uncomfortable about the fate of their socialist brethren. The British Labor Party, for example, opposed a ban on Soviet goods because it was suspicious of the motives of the companies promoting it.⁵

In the United States, however, trade unions, most notably the American Federation of Labor, came out in support of a boycott. Briefly, they succeeded. In America, the Tariff Act of 1930 prescribed that “All goods . . . mined, produced or manufactured . . . by convict labor or/and forced labor . . . shall not be entitled to entry at any of the ports of the United States.” ⁶ On that basis, the U.S. Treasury Department banned the import of Soviet pulpwood and matches.

Although the U.S. State Department failed to support the ban, which lasted only a week, discussion of the issue continued.⁷ In January 1931, the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. Congress met to consider bills “relating to the prohibition of goods produced by convict labor in Russia.”⁸ On May 18, 19, 20, 1931, The Times of London printed a series of surprisingly detailed articles on forced labor in the Soviet Union, concluding with an editorial condemning the British government’s recent decision to grant diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. Lending money to Russia would, the editorialists wrote, put “more power into the hands of those who are openly working for their overthrow and for the destruction of the British Empire.”

The Soviet regime took the threat of boycott very seriously indeed, and a number of measures were taken to prevent it from disrupting the flow of hard currency into the country. Some of these measures were cosmetic: the Yanson commission finally dropped the expression kontslager, or “concentration camp,” from all of its public statements, for example. From April 7, 1930, all official documents described Soviet concentration camps as ispravitelno-trudovye lagerya (ITL), or “corrective-labor camps.” No other term would be used in the future.⁹

Camp authorities made other cosmetic changes on the ground, particularly in the timber industry. At one point, the OGPU altered its contract with Karellis, the Karelian woodcutting concern, so that it appeared as if prisoners were no longer being employed. At that time, 12,090 prisoners were technically “removed” from OGPU camps. In fact, they kept working, but their presence was disguised beneath the bureaucratic shuffle.¹⁰ Once again, the Soviet leadership’s main concern was appearances, not reality.