The Soviet Gulag was a brutally efficient system of forced labor based on a simple idea: those who worked hard and behaved were given sufficient food. Those who didn't, because of fatigue or illness, were given less, until ultimately they starved and were replaced.

This was the bleak topic of which KU Professor Gerald Mikkelson spoke to a large audience in the Penn Valley library on Wednesday evening, February 8.

Mikkelson was preceded by MCC - Penn Valley Counselor Julianne Jacques, who spoke of her experiences while studying in Russia. Jacques said she was gratified that the story was finally being told, since for many in Russia still, history is only a very peripheral concern compared to the day-to-day struggle for survival.

Julianne Jacques

Jacques thanked everyone involved in the guest speaker event for helping to keep the story alive. She invited the audience to view the Gulag exhibit on the first floor, which powerfully detailed some of the individual struggles involved in challenging the Gulag while it was in power.

The exhibit was surrounded with actual barbed wire from one of the Gulag camps, and displayed some artifacts, such as an inmate's shirt. Photos and text also made it clear that to survive the misery of the Gulag, one needed incredible faith and physical endurance.

Dr. Al Dimmitt, MCC - PV Dean of Instruction, spoke next, lauding Mikkelson's impressive expertise in the field of Russian studies. Mikkelson has been teaching at KU for almost 40 years, and has also been a professor and guest speaker at universities in Russia.

Mikkelson proved that he knew his way around the language by effortlessly pronouncing Russian words throughout the presentation.

He said that "Gulag" is an acronym for Russian words meaning, literally, Main Camp Administration, or Chief Directorate of Labor Camps and Colonies. Early political detention camps in Siberia were leftovers from the Imperial Russian penal system, but when the Gulag was officially inaugurated by the Politboro in 1930, its purpose became, by decree, corrective labor.

Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, sent millions to the camps for "correction," although the population was drastically lowered during World War II, when most of the inmates were transformed into military conscripts. After the war, Stalin made sure to refresh the Gulag with thousands more deserters, traitors and problem citizens from the newly acquired Soviet satellite countries, along with plenty of Russians- whether loyal to the Party or not - needed to help with reconstruction.

Mikkelson pointed out that despite the profound and long suffering caused by the Gulag, the "Free World" knew hardly anything about it until 1973, when the Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn published The Gulag Archipelago, a gripping account of his own imprisonment from 1950-1954.

Gulag Exhibit

The Archipelago was Solzhenitsyn's metaphor for the Gulag as a chain of islands of hell which strangled the Soviet Union for most of the last century. Mikkelson suggested that the image was apt as well for the islands of prosperity that could be found in Russia's larger cities, surrounded by seas of poverty from coast to coast.

He said that the entire Soviet empire, from 1908-1991, had been built on the bones of the Russian people. Considering these incredible sacrifices, Mikkelson said, one is led inevitably to ask what it is about the Russians that has led them so far along this path.

Do they have some innate slave mentality, he asked, making them easy prey for one tyrant after another? Or are they basically a freedom-loving people, willing to risk lives and liberties for the passionate struggle, who have just had a long stretch of bad luck?

Mikkelson offered no answer of his own, but concluded with a quote from a song that became popular following Stalin's death: "I swear on our jolly banner, flying free through life, through death we are free!"

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