The Gulag's "Dead Souls": Mortality of Individuals Released from the Camps, 1930–55

Abstract

The Gulag's "Dead Souls"Mortality of Individuals Released from the Camps, 1930–55 Mikhail Nakonechnyi (bio) Before historians begin to use historical statistical data, they should attempt to discover how the data was collected and calculated and by whom these operations were carried out. They should attempt to see whether there are any reasons for doubting the reliability of these data. Where doubts do arise as to their reliability, they should attempt to make an assessment of the possible scale of the inaccuracy. It is extremely dangerous to accept figures on trust without understanding their origin and history. —Stephen Wheatcroft and Robert Davies How veracious are the official mortality statistics of the Gulag, an odious system of Soviet forced labor camps?1 For decades, this seemingly perennial question elicited considerable controversy in historical circles, both in Russia and in the West. As of 2021, the answer remains inconclusive, intensely politicized, and vociferously contested. This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the subject. Broadly, it is devoted to the critical quantitative reassessment of official death rates in several Gulag localities. The first scholarly recalculations of this kind, they reveal that the actual mortality in a random sample of camps and colonies appears to be significantly higher than the official data indicate. As its principal empirical contribution, the present article establishes a novel methodological algorithm for the quantitative revision of camp death rates. It identifies new sources and methods one can use to factor in previously omitted fatalities of ex-inmates, released from the Gulag on medical grounds (the so-called aktirovannye invalids). This article for the [End Page 803] first time demonstrably proves that ex-prisoners' mortality constituted not a unique coincidence, typical of a single deadly locality, but a consistent demographic pattern that repeated itself on an as yet unknown but broad temporal and spatial scale. More broadly, the article adds to the institutional history of Stalinist criminal justice. It sheds new light on paradoxes surrounding the registration of prisoner mortality data in the Gulag. By doing so, the article reveals the understudied idiosyncrasies and contradictions of the Soviet state apparatus's operation. To properly articulate the article's research questions, however, I begin with a succinct overview of the historical literature. "Mafiosi Internal Records" versus "Release to Die" The Soviet Union never published prisoner mortality data. Only after the partial opening of the archives in 1989–91 did scholars finally obtain the once top secret internal statistics of the Gulag. The declassified data were extracted from summary reports of the system's central administration in Moscow. They contained the empirical discovery that Steven Barnes presciently called "the most important archival-based revelation" concerning the Gulag—the numbers of prisoner deaths and releases between 1930 and 1953.2 Out of roughly 18 million people who entered the system in these years, "only" 1.7 million died. These internal archival figures appeared to be dramatically less than anticipated by "traditionalist" pre-archival scholarship, which relied on extrapolations and prisoners' memoirs (e.g., Robert Conquest). The latter also claimed that liberations from the Gulag were exceptionally rare and very few prisoners survived their sentence.3 To the surprise of many scholars, however, the Gulag possessed an unexpected "revolving door."4 Central records indicated that 90 percent of prisoners purportedly survived their incarceration and were listed as released.5 In fact, between 1934 and 1953, the camps liberated from 20 percent to 40 percent of its population annually, "many times more than died in the same year."6 [End Page 804] Over the years, historians have expressed radically divergent views on the putative veracity of these archival data. Viktor Zemskov considered the data, including mortality statistics, to be "exemplary" or even "absolutely precise" due to the alleged "rigorous order" of the internal accounting of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD).7 Some of his Western colleagues tended to be more critical but still considered the figures to be if not ideal, then generally reliable.8 For example, as Stephen Wheatcroft notes, "it would be rash to presume these data were in any absolute way perfect, but there seem to be no intrinsic grounds for presuming that these indicators are...