Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir (Russian: Гулаг Босс: советские мемуары) is a 2011 memoir by Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky (1918–1999), a Soviet Engineer and eventual Head of numerous Gulag camps in the northern Russian region of Pechorlag, Pechora, from 1940 to 1946. Under the orders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Mochulsky oversaw the construction of a 500 km-long rail line from the Pechorlag camps, bordering the Arctic Circle, to central Russia, with a goal to connect "remote Pechora Camps to the outside world". The book was published posthumously by the Oxford University Press in 2011. It is introduced as well as translated and edited by the historical sociologist, Deborah A. Kaple.
Background
Gulags (Russian: ГУЛаг, acronym of the Russian words Glavnoe upravlenia lagerei, meaning in English: Main Administration of Camps) were forced labor camps operated under the Soviet Union officially from April 25, 1930 until their abolishment by an MVD order on January 25, 1960; although, unofficially, political and criminal prisoners continued to endure forced labour internment until the late 1980s. Originally founded by Vladimir Lenin, the Gulag system continued to expand before reaching its peak during Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s. At the height of the USSR, there were 478 gulags, including 53 independent corrective labour colonies (the most common prison system in Russia involving both penal detention and compulsory work) in addition to a vast web of 425 corrective labour colonies spread out across Russia and its territories; this was not including a number of preexisting prisons operated by the State.
Stalin's NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), more commonly referred to as the Secret Police, arrested "counterrevolutionary organisations", intelligentsia, and the management class (who were trained labourers prior to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917) known as the "bourgeois specialists". If those arrested were able to avoid execution or indefinite exile, they would be imprisoned in Gulags all over the USSR. Stalin's Gulag system provided slave labour, hastening the development of economic projects, such as the White Sea Canal and the Baikal-Amur Mainline.
Overview
Mochulsky attended school in Minsk during the 1930s, before graduating as an Engineer from the Moscow-based Railroad Transport Engineering Institute in 1940. Within the same year, 22 year old Mochulsky was Ordered by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to work as a foreman at a Gulag camp, known as Pechorlag. Kaple describes Pechorlag as being within the Komi ASSR, "northeast of St.Petersburg and west of the Ural Mountains". Mochulsky's primary task was to manage the construction of a 500 km railway line over Russia's permafrost, and into urban USSR zones.
The memoir captures Mochulsky's anecdotes and personal encounters as camp boss, as well as the experiences of camp employees and prisoners. Mochulsky makes reference throughout the text on his ongoing relationship with the USSR regime; where he once offered ardent Soviet support in 1940, Mochulsky began questioning the intents and purposes of the Soviet government after his time at the Gulag ended in 1946.
Mochulsky's role in the Gulag system
As camp boss, Mochulsky's account gives light to the innerworkings of the Gulag economy. His memoir explains how civilians were able to occupy only two jobs at the Pechorlag camp; foreman and head of the camp unit. Mochulsky originally began working as camp foreman, before assuming the role as boss of the camp unit as well. Mochulsky moved between different camp units during his time at the Pechorlag, each time acquiring the role as both foreman and camp unit boss, oftentimes because the camps did not have a pre-existing administrative head(s). This was a common occurrence for Camp foreman's working at the Gulag camps in the Pechora region.
Soviet loyalty
Mochulsky was a Soviet regime loyalist during his time in Pechora, but admits, when he first started recounting his experiences at Pechorlag during the 1990s, to being overtly naive to the aggressive tactics enforced by the USSR's administrative body. According to Kaple, Mochulsky's family shared that he would often speak about his work at the Gulag because "the experiences deeply troubled him".