El Gulag

Approximately 14 million people passed through the Gulag "labour camps" from 1929 to 1953. A further 6-7 million were deported and exiled to remote areasof the USSR, and 4-5 million passed through "labour colonies".[11] The total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953.[6]According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953.[6] However, taking into account thatit was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or on the point of death,[12][13] the actual Gulag deathtoll was somewhat higher, amounting to 1,258,537 in 1934-53, or 1.6 million casualties during the whole period from 1929 to 1953.[14]
Most Gulag inmateswere not political prisoners, although significant numbers of political prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time.[15] Petty crimes and jokesabout the Soviet government and officials were punishable by imprisonment.[16][17] About half of political prisoners in the Gulag camps were imprisonedwithout trial; official data suggest that there were over 2.6 million sentences to imprisonment on cases investigated by the secret police throughout1921-1953.[18] The GULAG was reduced in size following Stalin’s death in 1953.
In 1960 the Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del (MVD) ceased to function as theSoviet-wide administration of the camps in favor of individual republic MVD branches. The centralized detention facilities temporarily ceased functioning.[19][20]