Resistance to the Regime: the GULAG's Prisoner Uprisings in the 1950-s and their Influence on Soviet Penitentiary System

The following research is dedicated to the uprisings in the special camps of the Soviet penitentiary system in 1953-1954. The aim of the paper is to trace the impact of mass uprisings of Norilsk, Vorkuta and Kengir on the reorganization of the Soviet penitentiary system in the 1950-s, and on the process of resistance to the regime in the USSR. The main thesis of the research suggests that mass uprisings in 1953-1954 have influenced the transformation of the GULAG in the 1950-s and on the following evolution of the resistance to the regime in the USSR. The paper is based on the departmental documents of MVD, the MVD-commissions reports about the adjustment of uprisings, MVD-executive workers meeting materials, the texts of MVD-reports in the Council of Ministers. Another group of the primary sources used in that research was the material of personal origin: the memoirs of the participants and witnesses of uprisings. The comparative analysis of the events of the uprisings was built around those two groups of primary sources, concentrating on the contingent of camps, uprisings prerequisites, and prisoner demands, which were made on camps administration and MVD-commissions members. The novelty of the research lies in the application of two different historiography approaches as an optics - the history of the resistance to the regime and Gulag’s history. The application of that optics allows to analyze the role, which uprisings have played not only in the reorganization of the Soviet penitentiary system, but also in the evolution of the resistance to the regime in the USSR. Within the paper, besides the comparative analysis of the events of the uprisings, their evaluation in the process of resistance to totalitarianism is provided, referring to Hannah Arendt’s works. The relevance of the topic of Gulag’s uprisings and the topic of resistance to the regime in the USSR is dictated by the existence of unresolved questions, relating to the processes of rehabilitation and integration of former prisoners into the Soviet and post Soviet society. Besides that, the active archival declassification of OGPU-NKVD-MVD’s materials is occurring in the Russian Federation, which opens the possibilities to explore that topic thoroughly.