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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

Gular suture: the line of division between the gulag or throat and the gene or cheeks.

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

Memorial was founded in the late 1980s to document victims of Soviet-era political repression during which millions of people perished in the Gulag penal system.

From Barron's ● Apr. 9, 2026

Prisoners in the Vorkuta Gulag, a major Soviet labor camp, in 1945.

From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2022

In 2017, he persuaded local authorities to erect a monument to its victims - a stone taken from the Solovetsky islands in Russia's far north, the site of the Soviet Union's first Gulag prison camp.

From Reuters ● Dec. 14, 2022

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

Long-banished literary works such as Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago,” Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” and George Orwell’s totalitarian allegory, “Animal Farm,” were published for the first time in the Soviet Union.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2022

Related Words

• gas chamber
• internment camp
• prison camp