page_title: Gulag
section_title: Gulag Museum
hierarchical_section_title: Gulag / Memorialization / Gulag Museum
caption_attribution_description: English: GULag Museum Moscow Russia Esperanto: GULag muzeo en Moskvo, Rusio Русский: Музей ГУЛага (Главное Управление Лагерей)в Москве на ул.Петровка, Россия
context_page_description: The Gulag or GULAG was the government agency in charge of the Soviet network of forced-labour camps set up by order of Vladimir Lenin, reaching its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s. English-language speakers also use the word gulag to refer to all forced-labour camps that existed in the Soviet Union, including camps that existed in the post-Stalin era.
  The Gulag is recognised as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as by NKVD troikas or by other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. In 1918–22, the agency was administered by Cheka, followed by the GPU, OGPU, later by the NKVD, and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Solovki prison camp, the first corrective labor camp constructed after the revolution, was established in 1918 and legalised by a decree, "On the creation of the forced-labour camps" on April 15, 1919.
  The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s.
context_section_description: Moscow has the State Gulag Museum whose first director was Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko. In 2015, another museum dedicated to the Gulag was opened in Moscow.
caption: Gulag Museum in Moscow, founded in 2001 by historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko
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