The Gulag as a Soviet Military Resource: Mobilization through Dismantlement

Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 2026. Vol. 39. No. 3. P. 447–466.

Khlevniuk O. V.

The Gulag as a system of terror and forced labor was the
cornerstone of Soviet mobilization efforts in the 1930s.
Paradoxically, during the war with Nazi Germany, the
Gulag’s capacities and economic significance did not grow,
but in fact declined, contrary to what one would expect. The
massive use of prisoners as a source for replenishing the
army and the huge rise in mortality in the camps led to the
Gulag’s destabilization. This crisis is indicative of understanding
the contradictions of Soviet wartime development. It
demonstrates the limits of supposedly unlimited violence
as a method of mobilization in war. The Soviet leadership
attempted to find some ways of stimulating forced labor
while abandoning certain extreme forms of violence. These
developments initiated the gradual dismantling of the Gulag
that peaked in the post-Stalinist period.

Keywords: мобилизация, mobilization, Великая Отечественная война, Gulag, ГУЛАГ, Great Patriotic War