Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Mapping the History of the Gulag


The Gulag was the government agency responsible for the forced labor camp system that operated in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s. The camps were widely used to house political prisoners or individuals the communist government believed might be dangerous, disruptive, suspicious or disloyal to the new regime. Prisoners in the Gulag camps were subject to forced hard labor and the prisoners were used as part of the Soviet industrialization campaign.

The Interactive Map of the Gulag is a visualization on the history and geography of the forced labor camps operating in Soviet Russia. It includes an interactive map showing the location of each camp and a timeline showing the number of prisoners held in the camps for each year from 1918 to 1960.

The markers are scaled to show the number of prisoners each camp held for each year. If you click on the timeline the markers will change size to show how many prisoners were in each camp in the chosen year. The map also displays the total number of prisoners held in the Gulag camps and the number of prisoners who died in the forced labor camp in that year.

If you select a camp's marker on the map you can view more detailed information on the selected camp. This includes the years that the camp operated, the activities which prisoners were forced to undertake and the number of prisoners held by year.

No comments: