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• gulag
  gulag

  noun

  the system of forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union.
• Gulag
  Gulag

  noun

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

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

Explanation

In the 20th century, the gulag was a system of Russian camps where political prisoners were sent to do forced labor. Officially, the last gulag closed in the 1950s. During the regimes of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union used gulags across the country to imprison political enemies. The entire system was known as the Gulag, an acronym from Russian that roughly translates to "Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps." Each individual prison camp was also referred to as a gulag. Some historians estimate that 14 million people were forced to labor in gulags, some for crimes as petty as joking about the Soviet government.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

gulag Gulag

As dark as the novel becomes, “the real darkness of the gulag there was so bleak that I had to cut it out,” the author has said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 17, 2026

If it is able to bring him back stateside, that is a de facto admission that it does indeed on some fundamental level retain custody of the people it’s sent to this gulag.

From Slate ● Apr. 8, 2025

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 ● Dec. 9, 2024

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

From Salon ● Feb. 21, 2024

Gulo-mental: includes the region covered by the gulag and mentum.

From Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology by John. B. Smith

Memorial's first chairman was the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and the group established the largest publicly available database on Gulag victims.

From Barron's ● Apr. 9, 2026

Guantanamo is a high-profile location that Amnesty International once termed “the Gulag of our time.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 14, 2025

Asked whether his criticism was unpatriotic, Orlov, citing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago", pointed out that military defeats have played a significant role in driving reform and development Russian history.

From Reuters ● Jul. 12, 2023

One woman called the village administration “TRAITORS” for withholding honors, while another man noted that purged Red Army officers released from the Gulag helped to defend the country during World War II.

From New York Times ● Mar. 26, 2023

Alekhina served her time in two regular prisons and says traditions set back in the days of Joseph Stalin's Gulag system are well alive.

From BBC ● Nov. 17, 2022

Related Words

• gas chamber
• internment camp
• prison camp