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Popov was released in 1954, after the death of Stalin, and returned to Bulgaria. [163] He wrote his autobiographical account in the book From the Leipzig trial to the Siberia camps (От Лайпцигския процес в Сибирските лагери, Изток-Запад, София, България, 2012 ISBN 978-619-152-025-1).
According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931, and 1,317,022 reached the destination. Deportations on a smaller scale continued after 1931. Data from the Soviet archives indicates 2.4 million kulaks were deported from 1930 to 1934. [52]
The largest camps consisted of more than 25,000 prisoners each, medium size camps held from 5,000 to 25,000 inmates, and the smallest, but most numerous labor camps operated with less than 5,000 people each. [1] Even this incomplete list can give a fair idea of the scale of forced labor in the USSR.
In March 1945, the surviving Swabians were ghettoized in "village camps", later described as "extermination camps" by the survivors, where the death rate ranged as high as 50%. [231] The most notorious camp was at Knićanin (formerly Rudolfsgnad), where an estimated 11,000 to 12,500 Swabians died. [232]
In the 1930s, Vorkuta was used temporarily as a camp for forced labour and "re-educating" political dissidents, especially Trotskyists.Most of Leon Trotsky's followers and supporters were either deported to camps in Siberia, executed or exiled by Joseph Stalin as a part of the Great Purge which started in August 1936.
The validity of these confessions is debated by historians, but there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint at which Stalin decided to take action and begin the purges. [ 33 ] [ 34 ] Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged the murder, or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion. [ 35 ]
Releases and amnesty began in the year of Stalin's death. Applebaum writes, "the death of Stalin really did signal the end of the era of massive slave labor in the Soviet Union." [4] Applebaum goes on to recount the events of revolutions that occurred within many camps after the death of Stalin, given the widespread rumors and preoccupation on ...
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin [f] (born Dzhugashvili; [g] 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.