The Second World War

by Antony Beevor

The population of the Gulag and of forced-labour battalions swelled to its largest level. The new convicts included both civilians and an estimated three million Red Army soldiers, sentenced for having collaborated as Hiwis, or simply for having surrendered. Large numbers of others, including eleven generals, were executed after brutal interrogations at the screening centres run by SMERSh and the NKVD. Abandoned by incompetent or terrified superiors in 1941, Soviet soldiers had starved in the indescribable horrors of German camps. Now they found themselves treated as ‘traitors of the Motherland’ because they had failed to kill themselves. Those who survived this second round of punishment remained branded for the rest of their lives and restricted to the most menial work. Right up until 1998, well after the fall of Communism, official forms continued to demand details on any member of an applicant’s family who had been a prisoner of war. The bloody revolts which took place in Gulag camps in the years after the war were almost all led by former Red Army officers and men.