gulag · name — the government agency in charge of the Soviet Union's network of forced labour camps, which was established in 1918 and formally abolished in 1960. It carries an Arena rating of 1562, earned across 95 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, gulag ranks #52 of 17,147 for Scariest Words, #365 of 17,115 for Most Storied Words, #1,086 of 17,137 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,110 of 17,153 for Most Incisive Words.
gulag is pronounced /ˈɡuːlɑɡ/.
Why “gulag” is a great word
GULAG — [Noun] A system of forced labor camps, especially for political prisoners, as operated by the Soviet Union, or any similar oppressive institution. From the Russian acronym ГУЛА́Г (GULÁG), from Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj, 'Chief Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps'). Unlike a “prison,” which implies a bounded, lawful institution for the criminally convicted, or a “concentration camp,” often tied to wartime internment and ethnic extermination, the gulag denotes a vast, permanent archipelago of political repression where labor itself was the corrective. It is the worn-smooth handle of a shovel in a frozen taiga, the bureaucratic ledger entry that consigns a soul to a mine, and the sound of a train moving ceaselessly toward a blank spot on the map—the final proof that the greatest horrors are born not of chaos, but of cold, systematic order.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
Borrowed from Russian ГУЛА́Г (GULÁG), the acronym of Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj, “Chief Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps”): see the definition.
name
- The government agency in charge of the Soviet Union's network of forced labour camps, which was established in 1918 and formally abolished in 1960.e.g.“The millions of slave-labourers at the disposal of GULAG played an important economic role, and indeed became accepted as a normal component of the Soviet economy.” — 1968, Robert Conquest, “In the Labour Camps”, in The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC, part II (The Yezhov Years), page
noun
- Also GULAG: the system of all Soviet labour camps and prisons in use, especially during the Stalinist period (1930s–1950s).
- A prison camp, especially one used to hold political prisoners.
- A place where, or political system in which, people with dissident views are routinely oppressed.
verb
- To compel (someone) into a forced labour camp or a similar place of confinement or exile.e.g.“Regulative censorships can be amended or revolutionized in ways that raise or lower bodycounts, numbers of books banned or citizens ghettoed or gulaged.” — 1988, Sue Curry Jansen, Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge (Communication and Society), New York, N.Y.; Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 8:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- gulaglike 66% match — Resembling or characteristic of a gulag. vs gulag →
- katorga 64% match — A tsarist or Soviet labour camp. vs gulag →
- sharashka 56% match — A secret research and development laboratory in the Soviet gulag. vs gulag →
- zek 53% match — A prisoner at a Russian prison, especially (historical) at a Soviet labour camp. vs gulag →
- prison 52% match — A place or institution where people are held against their will, in the US especially for long-term confinement, as of those convicted of serious crimes or otherwise considered undesirable by the government. vs gulag →
- gaoling 51% match — Dated spelling of jailing. vs gulag →
- lockup 50% match — A jail cell; a period of incarceration in such a cell; a facility containing such cells. vs gulag →
- gaolyard 50% match — Dated spelling of jailyard. vs gulag →