Edited by Paul R. Gregory and Valery Lazarev

ISBN: 0-8179-3942-3
$15.00 paperback
October 2003
212 pages

Until now, there has been little scholarly analysis of the Soviet Gulag as an economic, social, and political institution, primarily owing to a lack of data. This collection presents the results of years of research by Western and Russian scholars.

The authors provide both broad overviews and specific case studies as they examine

• The various forms of coercion and the channels through which coerced labor was distributed under Stalinism's heyday, from the late 1930s to the early 1950s

• Why the Gulag emerged and its perceived economic rationale

• The chronology of the Gulag from the first major projects—such as the White Sea–Baltic Canal—to the unfinished plans of the 1950s

• The day-to-day costs of maintaining the Gulag and the great hidden cost of coercion—the loss of productivity

• How the Soviet leadership desperately sought to find the right balance between extreme coercion and extreme material incentives for the labor force—and how material incentives played an increasingly greater role in later years

• How Stalin's death provided the excuse for radical reform and the end of the Gulag

Seen together, these contributions present an extraordinary portrait of a major aspect of the Soviet approach to economic achievement whose results should provide an invaluable lesson to future generations.

Paul R. Gregory is Cullen Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research, Berlin.

Valery Lazarev is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and is serving as a visiting assistant professor of economics at Yale University.

Contributors: Leonid Borodkin, Robert Conquest, Simon Ertz, Paul Gregory, Christopher Joyce, Oleg Khlevnyuk, Valery Lazarev, Mikhail Morukov, David Nordlander, Andrei Sokolov, Aleksei Tikhonov

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 518
Copyright © 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

First printing 2003

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The economics of forced labor : the Soviet Gulag / edited by Paul R. Gregory and Valery Lazarev.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8179-3942-3 (alk. paper)
1. Prison industries—Economic aspects—Soviet Union. 2. Forced labor—Economic aspects—Soviet Union. 3. Soviet Union—Economic conditions. 4. Industrialization—Soviet Union. 5. Soviet Union—Politics and government. I. Gregory, Paul R. II. Lazarev, V. V. (Valeric´i Vasil’evich)
HV8931.S65 E26 2003
331.11373—dc22
2003058318

Cover image courtesy of The Jamestown Foundation and Mr. James V. Kimsey.
The painting is by Gulag artist Nikolai Getman. It depicts the Butara gold-sand fields where Gulag prisoners were forced to labor year round breaking up the ground and sifting or panning to separate the gold from the sand. Many died of exhaustion, malnutrition, and sickness due to the extremely difficult conditions.