Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir, by Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky

"These prisoners were wary of me. What could really be expected from a twenty-two year old inexperienced youth, who, although trained as an engineer, for many of the ‘zek’s was old enough to be their son?"

This is the memoir of Fyodor Mochulsky, a man who spent several years in the administration of the Soviet Gulag, including six years supervising the construction of a railroad in the Arctic. It is the first memoir in English from an NKVD (KGB) employee, and recounts his experiences inside the Soviet system of terror and how he came to deal with the logistical and ethical challenges he faced. This book provides a unique perspective on the organization of evil and the thinking of all the apparently ordinary people who help run systems of terror.

Scholars have found evidence in Russian archives that there were nearly 480 camps in 1940

20-28 million people served time

1921-1951 As many as 7million executions took place(others say 2.7 million)

Outside of Academia Stalin’s Gulag remains shrouded in mystery. The Gulag was very much the creation of the secret police that dominated the Soviet Union

Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky (1918-1999) was a foreman and boss at Pechorlag GULAG NKVD from 1940-1946

Translated and Edited by Deborah Kaple, associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University