Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labor, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War by Wilson T. Bell (review)

Wilson T. Bell's thoroughly researched and carefully written Stalin's Gulag at War addresses the general question of the Gulag's contribution to the Soviet war effort in World War II. Focusing on the Gulag camps in Western Siberia permits a detailed examination of this little-studied region of the Gulag system and illustrates how the system there reflected general practices applied (or not) throughout the Soviet camp world.

Stalin's Gulag at War comprises an introduction, five chapters, an epilogue, extensive notes, and a formidable list of sources. To produce his narrative, Bell relied on archival materials and documents, memoirs, ample secondary sources, and recent films and news articles. This combination of materials allows a nuanced analysis that confronts the contradictions and paradoxes that a close examination of the function of the Gulag in World War II raises. Particularly impressive is Bell's ability to "converse" with other scholars by engaging with, or refuting, previous scholarship on the extent and importance of the mobilization of Gulag resources for the war effort. As Bell argues, "mobilization" not only underpinned the war effort but also defined Stalinism from 1928 to 1953: "[T]he scale of mass mobilization, at enormous cost in human life, was peculiar to the Stalinist system," and he argues that precisely this element distinguishes the Gulag from Nazi concentration camps and Tsarist penal practice.

To fully elucidate this idea, Bell traces the trajectory of the Western Siberian camps prior to the outbreak of World War II up to and after the war. How the Western Siberian camps developed figured prominently into their mobilization for the war effort. While strategically located at the nexus of major rivers and rail lines, the Western Siberian camps offered none of the vital materiel found in Norilsk, Vorkuta, or Kolyma. Prisoners in the Western Siberian camps often were the weakest in the system, thereby proscribing the labour in which they were to engage. The Western Siberian camps produced munitions, uniforms, foodstuffs, and other fabricated items that truly aided the war effort. The cost in human life, however, was so high as to question whether the mobilization of Gulag labour was worth it: "To put it bluntly, as a tool of mass mobilization, the Gulag was largely unnecessary, and its contributions could have easily been made up other ways."

Bell shapes this assessment by carefully examining how the mobilization of Gulag labour unfolded in Western Siberia (chapter two) and then explores the motivations of both prisoners and camp personnel as they assumed this challenge (chapters three and four). Three ideas stand out in this analysis: patriotism emerged in the Western Siberian camps among both the prisoners and their warders. While not shared by all, many prisoners harboured the sentiment that their labour could aid the war effort, especially vis-à-vis the well-being of their own families. Similarly, camp staff frequently viewed their directive to mobilize camp labour as a means to staunch the German invasion especially if they were unable or unwilling to enlist. Bell also illustrates how porous the boundaries were between the camps and populated areas surrounding them – interactions among camp personnel, civilian workers, and inmates regularly occurred. Finally, camp personnel were mostly "ordinary people" who were neither the most faithful Communist Party members nor the most qualified employees. Consequently, camp management and prisoner treatment often suffered from ineptitude, ignorance, and cruelty. This brief analysis cannot do justice to the meticulous analysis that Bell brings to these questions. Suffice it to say that our understanding of Gulag operations during World War II is significantly deeper thanks to Bell's scrupulous attention to the intricacies of parsing documents from the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, coupled with a close reading of memoir literature and supported by previous Gulag scholarship. Scholars, students, and World War II buffs will benefit from...