A threatening geography Forced displacement and convict labour in Western Siberia, 1879–1953

The Gulag is one of the key symbols of the mass state violence in the twentieth century. It relied, like other forced labour camp systems globally, on three interconnected repressive practices: internment, forced displacement, and forced labour. This thesis examines these elements prior to the emergence of the camps, and traces how they were welded together to lay the foundations for the gargantuan labour camp system of the Gulag. This research is situated at the crossroads of Russian history and global labour history and proposes a critical history of punishment in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union from the start of the prison reform in 1879 until the death of Stalin in 1953. This history is full of continuities, slowly formed predispositions, as well as shocks and ruptures: creation of the Gulag cannot be fully understood without a study of the early attempts to modernise the penal system. Some of the ideas and practices first articulated and probed by the Imperial prison officials were later appropriated by Gulag officials. In this dissertation, I underline the importance of the regional developments in transformations of punishment and highlight the tensions between the various groups of actors who shaped the repressive system over the years. By adopting a regional perspective, I was able to explore in detail both how punishment was deployed in Western Siberia and the state-wide repressive system.