This extraordinary law took an extraordinary toll. By the end of 1932, within less than six months of the law’s passage, 4,500 people had been executed for breaking it. Far more—over 100,000 people—had received ten-year sentences in labour camps. This preference for long camp sentences over capital punishment, dictated from above, was clearly pragmatic: forced labourers could get to work on the Gulag system’s vast new industrial projects—mines, factories, logging operations—that were just getting underway.
