gulag

American  

[goo-lahg] / ˈgu lɑg /

noun

(sometimes initial capital letter)

1. the system of forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union.

2. a Soviet forced-labor camp.

3. any prison or detention camp, especially for political prisoners.

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Gulag British  

/ ˈɡuːlæɡ /

noun

1. (formerly) the central administrative department of the Soviet security service, established in 1930, responsible for maintaining prisons and forced labour camps

2. (not capital) any system used to silence dissents

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gulag Cultural  

1. A system of prison camps inside the former Soviet Union used for political prisoners. Under Joseph Stalin, millions of prisoners in these camps died from starvation and maltreatment. This system was given worldwide attention in the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Gulag is an acronym in Russian of the name meaning Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps.

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Etymology

Origin of gulag

1970–75; < Russian Gulág, acronym from Glávnoe upravlénie ispravítelʾno-trudovýkh lageréĭ Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps

Compare meaning

How does gulag compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• gulag vs. concentration camp

Example Sentences

His 2011 memoir, “The Consolations of the Forest,” detailed his months of solitude in a remote cabin in Siberia, a region perhaps best known for its freezing gulags.

From The Wall Street Journal

They included 2003's I Am David, about a boy who escapes a gulag in Bulgaria, and the comedy Bringing Down the House, starring Steve Martin, from the same year.

From BBC

The weakness of the regime, to the point that it collapsed like a soggy paper bag, was disguised by the fearsome and repressive gulag it still maintained.

From BBC

Ordering him to pay up is somehow or other equivalent to being killed in an arctic gulag.

From Salon

A lot of cities in Russia have these memorials that were generally put up in the 1990s, honoring the victims of the gulag and other repression during the Soviet Union.

From New York Times

Related Words

• gas chamber
• internment camp
• prison camp