Сoncentration Camp as an Organized Form of Political Violence in Post-Revolutionary Russia: A Historical-Sociological Analysis

Abstract

The article provides a historical-sociological comparative analysis of the punitive policy of the Soviet state and the «white» state formations of Siberia in the years of the civil war. The results of the analysis allow to make conclusions and generalizations that are relevant to our days, help to reveal the complexity and contradictory nature of processes occurring in Russia in the first years after the revolution. The publication examines the conceptual and normative-legal bases of the concentration camps formation (by both the «Reds» and the «Whites») as an organized form of political violence associated with forced isolation of politically and socially unacceptable groups of people. It is shown that in contrast to prisons, concentration camps were created by the Soviet authorities special orders initially as temporary places of detention and in most cases they used prisoners for forced labor. It is also noted that in the concentration camps of anti-Bolshevik governments of Siberia, in addition to the World War I prisoners of war, were kept Bolsheviks and soviet workers, Red Army prisoners and other persons suspected of being sympathetic to Bolshevism.