Od Sillamäe do Goli Otok. Obozy pracy przymusowej i NKWD w krajach nadbałtyckich, Europie Środkowo–Wschodniej i na Bałkanach po drugiej wojnie światowej. Skala zjawiska i codzienność

Abstract

From Sillamäe to Goli Otok. NKVD and Labour Camps in the Baltic countries, Central–Eastern Europe, and the Balkans after World War II. Scale of the Phenomenon and Daily LifeThe article considers the post–war history of several hundred labour and NKVD camps located in the Baltic states, Central–Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. After wartime hostilities came to an end these regions became subjected to the strict control of the Soviet NKVD and the communist regime in particular countries. The Stalinist administration of such penal institutions remained clearly discernible to 1953. The death of Joseph Stalin did not put an end to the history of the labour camps in the titular region: they continued to exist, although in an increasingly more lenient form and with lesser Soviet presence. The geographic area of the reflections encompasses two symbolic penal institutions: Sillamäe in Estonia, on the Baltic, and the infamous Naked Island (Goli Otok) off the Adriatic coast. The line running from Estonia to Yugoslavia resembled, in its simplest form, the course of the Iron Curtain separating Western Europe from the Soviet sphere of influence, which included the Baltic states, ultimately incorporated into the Soviet Union, as well as Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. The author included information about the localisation of the camps, their sizes and living conditions, as well as the universally applied repression against the inmates.