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Nasledie GULAGa: Prinuditel'nyi trud sovetskoi epokhi kak vnutrenniaia kolonizatsiia

The essay, based on newly available official and private archives, challenges the conventional view of the Gulag as lethal camps where pointless labour prevailed. The Gulag’s primary purpose was isolation and punishment, but its economic activities, and its use of human capital, indicate that the colonization of unexploited regions of the USSR was an extremely significant secondary mission. The Gulag’s investment in medical care, despite its failures, is evidence of an internal-colonial rationale. Moreover, Gulag medicine left a legacy – living inhabitants, and a medical infrastructure – that are part of the inheritance of penal colonization in contemporary Russia.