The Memory of Soviet Forced Labour: Origins and Transformation

Daria Reznyk

Halyna Herasymchuk was eighteen when she was deported to the so-called Steplag (Stepnoy Camp Directorate) in Kazakhstan, one of the largest Gulag camps for political prisoners. Like all inmates, she was subjected to hard forced labour. She recalled being “fortunate” as she was assigned comparatively “lighter” work – logging. By contrast, other women had to work in a nearby quarry, transporting stones in mine carts, leaving many “crippled and barely alive” (Herasymchuk interview, 2022).

Steplag relied on prisoner labour for mining and construction, where harsh conditions and poor living standards caused widespread diseases such as tuberculosis and silicosis. Herasymchuk remained in the camp until 1956, when she was released following Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality. Khrushchev’s speech did not address one of the Soviet system’s fundamental features – forced labour. While often associated with the Gulag, it encompassed a broader range of practices, including labour camps, special settlements, and forms of “socially useful work.” Carceral labour was deeply embedded in Soviet society, with sub-camps located near most major cities. This coexistence, along with the mass repressions from the 1930s to 1950s, ensured that forced labour remained firmly embedded in public memory long after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

This article analyses how and by whom the memory of forced labour in the Soviet Union was constructed, how it was (not) represented within the memorial landscape, and how this memory has been transformed since 1991, with particular attention paid to memory spaces in Russia and Ukraine.

Labour in the Soviet Union: From Glorification to Coercion

“He who does not work, neither shall he eat” is one of the well-known aphorisms appropriated by the Soviet Union. Vladimir Lenin began using it in 1917 and it was enshrined in all three Soviet constitutions (1918, 1936, 1977), which defined labour as a fundamental duty. Lenin framed labour as essential to the “construction of communism.” Lenin, together with other prominent party figures (such as Trotsky and Bukharin), developed the concept of forced labour, which initially targeted the former bourgeoisie. A major challenge for the Soviet leadership was the territory of the so-called Far East (far from Moscow), which lacked the infrastructure essential for industrialisation. At first, the government encouraged voluntary resettlement for socially useful labour, but this approach quickly proved ineffective, as not many people were willing to work there (Polyan 2001: 61).

In the late 1920s, Nikolay Janson proposed a more “active” use of convict labour, particularly in logging and the development of tselina (virgin lands). This idea was implemented with the forced labour of deported “kulaks” (peasants who owned property or land), who became one of the primary targets. In 1930, the Main Administration of Camps (Gulag) was established to oversee the camp and settlement system. Deportations and forced labour were extended to so-called “politically unreliable elements” from 1933 and, after the Second World War, to deportees from “unreliable” nations, such as Germans, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Lithuanians, Latvians, etc.

Overall, between 1920 and 1952, approximately six million people were subjected to internal deportations in the Soviet Union. This figure includes both Gulag prisoners, who were held in prisons and had a harsher system of imprisonment, and so-called special settlers, who were forcibly relocated to remote settlements, guarded by the NKVD (Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del, secret police, intelligence, and law enforcement agency). The forced settlers had relatively “easier” living conditions, often living in barracks with entire families, while Gulag prisoners were completely isolated. While both categories were subjected to compulsory labour, not all deportees were mobilised for labour, as the elderly, children, and the infirm were excluded. The extensive practice of deportations served as the primary source of forced labour. Because of this, even if repressive policies and forced labour were generally treated as separate phenomena in memorial culture, they often coexist in the memory of Stalinism.

The Construction of Memory

A widespread misconception about memory in the Soviet Union holds that memory practices did not exist as such, since they were “prohibited” (Grinchenko 2012: 424). However, after 1953, when the official policy of repression and carceral labour began to decrease, memories of the lived experience developed in different contexts.

In the 1950s–1960s, former prisoners became key agents of memory while facing bureaucratic barriers, discrimination, and social stigma. To rebuild their lives, many tried to conceal their past from families and communities, even though they remained under constant KGB checks. Khrushchev’s 1956 speech created limited opportunities for public discussion of repression. In 1962, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published „One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich“, sparking debate about whether prisoners were truly “enemies of the people” and whether forced labour could reform them (Dobson 2005). However, such discussions remained tightly controlled; the text was censored, later removed from libraries. Solzhenitsyn’s „The Gulag Archipelago“ was published only abroad in 1973-1975. Although public debate remained limited between 1960 and 1985, it laid the groundwork for broader engagement during perestroika and glasnost. A key milestone was the establishment of the nongovernmental organisation Memorial in 1987, which later expanded across the former Soviet republics. The first attempts at bottom-up memorialization emerged already in the late 1980s, with museums initiated by local professionals and historians with no government involvement (Staf 2023). Earlier Soviet exhibitions had glorified projects such as, for example, the White Sea Canal while ignoring the issue of forced labour and the number of victims involved in its construction (Makhotina 2010: 94).

These early attempts show that memorialization was not entirely absent in the Soviet Union and raised issues that would be essential to broader debates on memory in the independent post-Soviet republics. As for former victims of forced labour, their silenced experiences became a necessary part of the transformation of memory that occurred after 1991.

Does Memory Follow Different Paths?

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the gradual rethinking of Stalinism, some might have imagined that post-Soviet society would gradually reach a stage of widespread memorialization and public discourse around the topic of repression. This process was further facilitated by the gradual opening of archives, which enabled the dissemination of scholarship on the Gulag and its practices.

One of the earliest publications based on newly accessible NKVD archives was a 1992 article by Oleg Khlevniuk, who argued that despite the systematic use of Gulag labour in the Soviet economy, it remained inefficient and often unprofitable. Interpretations of the camp system were shaped by former victims’ testimonies and Memorial’s work, which included legal support, publishing testimonies, and establishing memorial sites. Sandarmokh, a memorial site established in Russia in 1997 on Memorial’s initiative, became a site of “memory clashes” due to the politicisation of the Gulag and Stalinist repression, while Russian authorities avoided assigning responsibility for the executions. On the one hand, by appropriating the legacy of the Soviet Union, Russia was trying to balance between acknowledging repressions and glorifying Soviet history (particularly the victory over Nazism) while further downplaying Soviet responsibility. On the other hand, former Soviet republics and different ethnic groups were trying to bring justice to the victims and give them a voice. Since the early 2000s, these memory trajectories have diverged further, with Russia and Ukraine offering particularly illustrative examples.

In a 2017 interview with the American filmmaker Oliver Stone, Vladimir Putin stated that the “excessive demonization” of Stalin is “one means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia.” Putin acknowledged that the numerous victims of Stalinism “must be taken into account”, but continued that “Stalin was an effective manager”. Surveys show that public attitudes toward Stalin were largely neutral between 2008 and 2014, but have become increasingly positive since 2015, regardless of the respondents’ age. This shift reflects a broader state policy that, particularly since 2014, has adopted an anti-Western, neo-imperial ideological framework (Garner, Kuzio 2025: 25–26). In memorial practices, this trend is visible in the gradual reorientation of institutions. A notable example is the closure of the Gulag History Museum in 2024, with plans to replace it with a “Museum of the Genocide of the Soviet People”, emphasising Nazi crimes. Previously debated issues, such as forced labour and the plurality of historical narratives, are increasingly reframed through the ideology of “defence of Russia”, obscuring difficult aspects of the past. These trends have intensified since the war against Ukraine begun in 2014 and especially after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

By contrast, in contemporary Ukraine one can observe a “festival of historical politics” (Kasianov 2022: 390) marked by high societal sensitivity towards the past and the often-conflicted nature of memorialisation decisions. After 2014, and particularly following 2022, Ukrainian society has increasingly equated the Soviet Union with contemporary Russia. Decolonisation processes aim to de-Russify historical narratives, framing Soviet repression as part of a broader Russian imperial policy. This perspective is actively promoted at the state level by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory and was reinforced by the 2015 decommunisation laws and the opening of KGB archives. A notable example is the 2024/25 exhibition “Communism = Rashizm”, which integrates the histories of victims of Soviet repression with those of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. “Rashizm” is a neologism which describes the political ideology and policies of the modern Russian state.

Under wartime conditions, interest in national history within the country grew significantly, with the aim of bringing more Ukrainian histories to the table. A big role is played here by nongovernmental organisations and local actors. One notable example is the NGO After Silence, founded in L’viv in 2021 by young researchers interested in the harsh history of Ukraine in the twentieth century. The organisation is dealing with individual experiences, meeting with witnesses and digitising family archives. Acting independently of the state, the NGO promotes the decolonisation of Ukrainian history from Russian narratives.

Thus, we see how an essentially identical process takes place both on the part of the state (represented by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory) and local initiatives. The history of forced labour and repressions here plays the role of an additional argument in favour of the fight against Russia, because an “equal” sign is placed between it and the Soviet Union.

Unlike Russia, where Putin has promoted a unified model of memory by reshaping and silencing historical narratives, Ukraine, since 2014, has experienced a “festival of historical politics” shaped by war. The history of repression in the Soviet Union, including forced labour and Stalinism, has undergone a significant transformation, evolving from processes of un-silencing to forms of historical instrumentalisation in modern narratives. It appears that constructing a single, unified narrative of remembrance for all former Soviet republics, particularly Russia and Ukraine, is neither feasible nor desirable. However, this affords us a multiplicity of narratives and will hopefully shape the field for the better in peacetime.

Bibliography

Dobson, Miriam: Contesting the Paradigms of De-Stalinization: Readers’ Responses to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in: Slavic Review, 64 (2005) 3, pp. 580–600.

Etkind, Alexander: Russia against Modernity, Cambridge 2023.

Garner, Ian/Kuzio, Taras (eds.): Russia and Modern Fascism: New Perspectives on the Kremlin’s War against Ukraine, Stuttgart 2025.

Grinchenko, Gelinada: The Ostarbeiter of Nazi Germany in Soviet and Post-Soviet Ukrainian Historical Memory, in: Canadian Slavonic Papers, 54 (September–December 2012), 3–4, pp. 401–426.

Kasianov, Georgiy: Memory Crash: Politics of History in and around Ukraine, 1980s–2010s, Budapest 2022.

Makhotina, Ekaterina: Vom “Heldenepos” zum “Opferort” und zurück: Gedächtnisorte des Weißmeerkanals im heutigen Russland – eine Lokalstudie im Medvež’egorsker Rayon, in:  Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 58 (2010) 1, pp. 70–99, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41052382 [accessed 15.04.2026].

Polyan, Pavel: Ne po svoyey vole…: Istoriya i geografiya prinuditel’nykh migratsiy v SSSR [Against Their Will…: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the Soviet Union], Moscow 2001.

Staf, Vladislav: Local Initiatives: A Historical Analysis of the Creation of Memorial Museums of the Gulag in (Post-)Soviet Russia, in: Problems of Post-Communism, 70 (2023) 5, pp. 471–478. URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10758216.2023.2166846 [accessed 15.04.2026].