Stalin’s Empire
Stalin’s Empire
The Gulag and Police Colonization in the Soviet Union in the 1930s
Geography, resource extraction, and a colonization drive led primarily by the Soviet secret police were among the factors behind the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. Unlike most European powers, neither Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union was able to rely on colonies for economic growth. The system that developed in the Soviet Union was an inversion of Hitler’s empire building. While Germany turned outward, dreaming of an agricultural economy founded on German settlers and Slavic slaves in the east, the Soviet Union turned inward, pursuing internal colonization and resource extraction founded on the forced labor of the Gulag.
Keywords: Soviet Union, Gulag, colonization, imperialism, industrialization, collectivization, First Five-Year Plan, economic exploitation, terror, Nazi Germany
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