The Gulag () was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment, and the Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.

''GULag'' is the acronym for ''Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies'' () of the NKVD. It was officially created on April 25, 1930 and dissolved on January 13, 1960. Eventually, by metonymy, the usage of "the Gulag" began generally denoting the entire penal labor system in the USSR, than any such penal system.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, introduced the term to the Western world with the 1973 publication of his ''The Gulag Archipelago''. The book likened the scattered camps to "a chain of islands" and described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. Some scholars concur with this view, whereas others argue that the Gulag was neither as large nor as deadly as it is often presented, and it did not have death camps, although during some periods of its history, mortality was high in the labor camps.

On March 1940, there were 53 separate camps and 423 labor colonies in the USSR. Today's major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.

Brief history

14 million people passed through the ''Gulag'' "labour camps" from 1929 to 1953, with a further 6 to 7 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR, plus 4-5 millions passed through "labour colonies", which meant to confine the prisoners serving short (less than 3 years) terms. The total population of the camps varied from 510,307 (in 1934) to 1,727,970 (in 1953). According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953. These estimates exclude those who died shortly after their release but whose death resulted from the harsh treatment in the camps; such deaths happened frequently. The studies that take into account these deaths put the death toll for this same time period at 1,258,537, with an estimated 1.6 million casualties from 1929 to 1953.

Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although the political prisoner population was always significant. People could be imprisoned in a Gulag camp for crimes such as petty theft, unexcused absences from work, and anti-government jokes. About half of the political prisoners were sent to Gulag prison camps without trial; official data suggest that there were more than 2.6 million imprisonment sentences in cases investigated by the secret police, 1921-1953. The Gulag was radically reduced in size following Stalin’s death in 1953.

In 1960 the Soviet-wide MVD (oversight organization for the Gulag) was shut down in favor of individual republic MVD (Ministry of Interior). The nationwide centralized command detention facilities (Gulag) temporarily ceased to function. Political prisoners also continued to be held in the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era.

Modern usage and other terminology

Although ''Gulag'' was originally the name of a government agency, the acronym acquired the qualities of a common noun, denoting: ''the Soviet system of prison-based, unfree labor'' — including specific labor, punishment, criminal, political, and transit camps for men, women, and children.

Even more broadly, "Gulag" has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the "meat-grinder": the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths.

Other authors, mostly in the West, use ''gulag'' as denoting all the prisons and internment camps in Soviet history (1917–1991) with the plural ''gulags''. The term's contemporary usage is notably unrelated to the USSR, such as in the expression “North Korea's Gulag” for camps operational still today.

The word ''Gulag'' was not often used in Russian — either officially or colloquially; the predominant terms were ''the camps'' () and ''the zone'' (), usually singular — for the labor camp system and for the individual camps. The official term, "corrective labor camp", was suggested for official politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union use in the session of July 27, 1929.

History

Background

From 1920s to 1950s, the leaders of the Communist Party and Soviet state considered repressiveness not only as a way to provide the conditions for normal functioning of the state system, but also to preserve and strengthen positions of their social base, presented by working class, in society. From social class perspectives, the Gulag is an offspring of the working class which became a leading class of society after the October Revolution. The Gulag was invented to isolate class-alien, socially dangerous, disruptive, suspicious, and other disloyal elements (real and imaginary ones) whose deeds and thoughts were not contributing to the strengthening of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” After having appeared as a tool and place for isolating counterrevolutionary and criminal elements to protect and strengthen the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the Gulag, because of its principle of “correction by forced labor”, quickly became, in fact, an independent branch of the national economy secured on a cheap labor force presented by prisoners. Without this “industry”, it has actually become impossible to solve many tasks of industrialization in eastern and northern regions. Hence it is followed by one more important reason for the constancy of the repressive policy, namely, the state's interest in unremitting rates of receiving the cheap labor force that was forcibly used mainly in the extreme conditions of the east and north. Thus, the Gulag possessed two functions, the first one was punitive, and the second one was economic.

According to Anne Applebaum, "In 1906, only about 6000 katorga convicts were serving sentences; in 1916, on the eve of the Revolution, there were only 28,600." After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Russian penal system was taken over by the Bolsheviks. From 1918, camp-type detention facilities were set up, as a reformed analogy of the earlier system of penal labor (''katorgas''), operated in Siberia in Imperial Russia. The two main types were "Vechecka Special-purpose Camps" () and forced labor camps (). They were installed for various categories of people deemed dangerous for the state: for common criminals, for prisoners of the Russian Civil War, for officials accused of corruption, sabotage and embezzlement, various political enemies and dissidents, as well as former aristocrats, businessmen and large land owners. These camps, however, were not on the same scale as those in the Stalin era. In 1928 there were 30,000 prisoners in camps, and the authorities were opposed to compelling them to work. In 1927 the official in charge of prison administration wrote that: "The exploitation of prison labor, the system of squeezing ‘golden sweat’ from them, the organization of production in places of confinement, which while profitable from a commercial point of view is fundamentally lacking in corrective significance – these are entirely inadmissible in Soviet places of confinement.”

The legal base and the guidance for the creation of the system of "corrective labor camps" (), the backbone of what is commonly referred to as the "Gulag", was a secret decree of Sovnarkom of July 11, 1929, about the use of penal labor that duplicated the corresponding appendix to the minutes of Politburo meeting of June 27, 1929.

Creation of "GULag" and its expansion under Stalin

As an all-Union institution and a main administration with the OGPU (the Soviet secret police), the GULag was officially established on April 25, 1930 as the "ULAG" by the OGPU order 130/63 in accordance with the Sovnarkom order 22 p. 248 dated April 7, 1930, and was renamed into GULag in November.

In the early 1930s a drastic tightening of Soviet penal policy caused a significant growth of the prison camp population. During the period of the Great Purge (1937–38) mass arrests caused another increase in inmate numbers. During these years hundreds of thousands of individuals were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms on the grounds of one of the multiple passages of the notorious Article 58 of the Criminal Codes of the Union republics, which defined punishment for various forms of "counterrevolutionary activities." Under NKVD Order № 00447 tens of thousands of GULag inmates who were accused of "continuing anti-Soviet activity in imprisonment" were executed in 1937-38.

The hypothesis that economic considerations were responsible for mass arrests during the period of Stalinism has been refuted on the grounds of former Soviet archives that have become accessible since the 1990s, although some archival sources also tend to support an economic hypothesis. In any case the development of the camp system followed economic lines. The growth of the camp system coincided with the peak of the Soviet industrialization campaign. Most of the camps established to accommodate the masses of incoming prisoners were assigned distinct economic tasks. These included the exploitation of natural resources and the colonization of remote areas as well as the realization of enormous infrastructural facilities and industrial construction projects.

In 1931–32 archives indicate the Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; in 1935 — approximately 800,000 in camps and 300,000 in colonies (annual averages).

Between 1934 and 1941, the number of prisoners with higher education increased more than eight times, and the number of prisoners with high education increased five times. It resulted in their increased share in the overall composition of the camp prisoners. Among the camp prisoners, the number and share of the intelligentsia was growing at the quickest pace. Distrust, hostility, and even hatred for the intelligentsia is a common characteristic of the communist leaders. After having laid hold of unlimited power, they, as practice has shown, were simply unable to resist the temptation to mock the intelligentsia. The Stalin version of mocking the intelligentsia was the referral of its part to the Gulag on the basis of far-fetched or fabricated charges. For unrepressed part of the intelligentsia, the mockery was prepared in the form of “ideological dressing down”, leading and guiding instructions “from above” on how to think, do, worship the “leaders”, etc.

During World War II

On the eve of World War II, Soviet archives indicate a combined camp and colony population upwards of 1.6 million in 1939, according to V. P. Kozlov. Anne Applebaum and Steven Rosefielde estimate that 1.2 to 1.5 million people were in Gulag system's prison camps and colonies when the war started.

After the German invasion of Poland that marked the start of WWII, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed eastern parts of the Second Polish Republic. In 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia (now the Republic of Moldova) and Bukovina. According to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens and inhabitants of the other annexed lands, regardless of their ethnic origin, were arrested and sent to the gulag camps. However, according to the official data, the total number of sentences for political and antistate (espionage, terrorism) crimes in USSR in 1939-41 was 211,106.

Approximately 300,000 Polish prisoners of war were captured by the USSR during and after the 'Polish Defensive War'. Almost all of the captured officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers were then murdered (see Katyn massacre) or sent to GULag Of the 10,000-12,000 Poles sent to Kolyma in 1940-1941, most POWs, only 583 men survived, released in 1942 to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East. Out of Anders' 80,000 evacuees from Soviet Union gathered in Great Britain only 310 volunteered to return to Soviet-controlled Poland in 1947.

During the war, Gulag populations declined sharply due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. In the winter of 1941 a quarter of the Gulag's population died of starvation. 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941-43.

In 1943, the term ''katorga works'' (каторжные работы) was reintroduced. They were initially intended for Nazi collaborators, but then other categories of political prisoners (for example, members of deported peoples who fled from exile) were also sentenced to "katorga works". Prisoners sentenced to "katorga works" were sent to Gulag prison camps with the most harsh regime and many of them perished.

After World War II

After World War II the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies, again, rose sharply, reaching approximately 2.5 million people by the early 1950s (about 1.7 million of whom were in camps).

When the war ended in May 1945, as many as two million former Russian citizens were forcefully repatriated into the USSR. On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the Soviet Union. One interpretation of this agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets. British and U.S. civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union up to two million former residents of the Soviet Union, including persons who had left the Russian Empire and established different citizenship years before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945-1947.

Often, one finds statements that Soviet POWs on their return to the Soviet Union were often treated as traitors (see Order No. 270). According to some sources, over 1.5 million surviving Red Army soldiers imprisoned by the Germans were sent to the Gulag. However, that is a confusion with two other types of camps. During and after World War II, freed PoWs went to special "filtration" camps. Of these, by 1944, more than 90 percent were cleared, and about 8 percent were arrested or condemned to penal battalions. In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated Ostarbeiter, PoWs, and other displaced persons, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, the major part if the population of these camps war cleared by NKVD and either sent home or conscripted (see table for details). 226,127 out of 1,539,475 POWs were transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the Gulag.

Total 2,427,906 801,152 608,095 272,867 89,468 4,199,488

!Results of the checks and the filtration of the repatriants (by 1 March 1946)
Categogy	|	%	Civilian	%	POWs	%
Released and sent home (this figure included those who died in custody)	|	57.81	2,146,126	80.68	281,780	18.31
Conscripted	|	19.08	141,962	5.34	659,190	42.82
Sent to labour battalions of the Ministry of Defence	|	14.48	263,647	9.91	344,448	22.37
Sent to NKVD as ''spetskontingent''(i.e. sent to GULAG)	|	6.50	46,740	1.76	226,127	14.69
Were waiting for transportation and worked for Soviet military units abroad	|	2.13	61,538	2.31	27,930	1,81
Totally:	|		2,660,013		1,539,475

After Nazi Germany's defeat, ten NKVD-run "special camps" subordinate to the GULag were set up in the Soviet Occupation Zone of post-war Germany. These "special camps" were former Stalags, prisons, or Nazi concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen (special camp number 7) and Buchenwald (special camp number 2). According to German government estimates "65,000 people died in those Soviet-run camps or in transportation to them." According to German researchers, Sachsenhausen, where 12,500 Soviet era victims have been uncovered, should be seen as an integral part of the Gulag system. For years after World War II, a significant minority of the inmates were Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians from lands newly incorporated into the Soviet Union, as well as Finns, Poles, Volga Germans, Romanians and others. POWs, in contrast, were kept in a separate camp system (see POW labor in the Soviet Union), which was managed by GUPVI, a separate main administration with the NKVD/MVD.

Yet the major reason for the post-war increase in the number of prisoners was the tightening of legislation on property offences in summer 1947 (at this time there was a famine in some parts of the Soviet Union, claiming about 1 million lives), which resulted in hundreds of thousands of convictions to lengthy prison terms, sometimes on the basis of cases of petty theft or embezzlement. At the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of which more than 465 thousand were political prisoners.

The state continued to maintain the extensive camp system for a while after Stalin's death in March 1953, although the period saw the grip of the camp authorities weaken and a number of conflicts and uprisings occur (''see'' Bitch Wars; Kengir uprising; Vorkuta uprising).

The amnesty in March 1953 was limited to non-political prisoners and for political prisoners sentenced to not more than 5 years, therefore mostly those convicted for common crimes were then freed. The release of political prisoners started in 1954 and became widespread, and also coupled with mass rehabilitations, after Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in his Secret Speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956.

By the end of the 1950s, virtually all "corrective labor camps" were dissolved. Colonies, however, continued to exist. Officially the GULag was liquidated by the MVD order No 020 of 25 January 1960.

(See also Foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union)

Conditions

Living and working conditions in the camps varied significantly across time and place, depending, among other things, on the impact of broader events (World War II, countrywide famines and shortages, waves of terror, sudden influx or release of large numbers of prisoners). However, to one degree or another, the large majority of prisoners at most times faced meagre food rations, inadequate clothing, overcrowding, poorly insulated housing, poor hygiene, and inadequate health care. Most prisoners were compelled to perform harsh physical labor. In most periods and economic branches, the degree of mechanization of work processes was significantly lower than in the civilian industry: tools were often primitive and machinery, if existent, short in supply. Officially established work hours were in most periods longer and days off were fewer than for civilian workers. Often official work time regulations were extended by local camp administrators.

Andrei Vyshinsky, procurator of the Soviet Union, wrote a memorandum to NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov in 1938 which stated:

Among the prisoners there are some so ragged and liceridden that they pose a sanitary danger to the rest. These prisoners have deteriorated to the point of losing any resemblance to human beings. Lacking food . . . they collect orts [refuse] and, according to some prisoners, eat rats and dogs.

In general, the central administrative bodies showed a discernible interest in maintaining the labor force of prisoners in a condition allowing the fulfillment of construction and production plans handed down from above. Besides a wide array of punishments for prisoners refusing to work (which, in practice, were sometimes applied to prisoners that were too enfeebled to meet production quota), they instituted a number of positive incentives intended to boost productivity. These included monetary bonuses (since the early 1930s) and wage payments (from 1950 onwards), cuts of individual sentences, general early-release schemes for norm fulfillment and overfulfillment (until 1939, again in selected camps from 1946 onwards), preferential treatment, and privileges for the most productive workers (shock workers or Stakhanovites in Soviet parlance).

A distinctive incentive scheme that included both coercive and motivational elements and was applied universally in all camps consisted in standardized "nourishment scales": the size of the inmates’ ration depended on the percentage of the work quota delivered. Naftaly Frenkel is credited for the introduction of this policy. While it was effective in compelling many prisoners to work harder, for many a prisoner it had the adverse effect, accelerating the exhaustion and sometimes causing the death of persons unable to fulfill high production quota.

Immediately after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 the conditions in camps worsened drastically: quotas were increased, rations cut, and medical supplies came close to none, all of which led to a sharp increase in mortality. The situation slowly improved in the final period and after the end of the war.

Considering the overall conditions and their influence on inmates, it is important to distinguish three major strata of Gulag inmates:

"kulaks", osadniks, "ukazniks" (people sentenced for violation of various ukases, such as Law of Spikelets, decree about work discipline, etc.), occasional violators of criminal law

dedicated criminals: "thieves in law"

people sentenced for various political and religious reasons

Mortality in GULag camps in 1934-40 was 4-6 times higher than average in Russia. The estimated total number of those who died in imprisonment in 1930-1953 is 1.76 million, about half of which occurred between 1941-1943 following the German invasion. If prisoner deaths from labor colonies and special settlements are included, the death toll rises to 2,749,163, although the historian who compiled this estimate (J. Otto Pohl) stresses that it is incomplete, and doesn't cover all prisoner categories for every year. Other scholars have stressed that internal discrepancies in archival material suggests that the NKVD Gulag data are seriously incomplete. Adam Jones wrote:

It was these Siberian camps, devoted either to gold-mining or timber harvesting, that inflicted the greatest toll in the Gulag system. Such camps “can only be described as extermination centres,” according to Leo Kuper. The camp network that came to symbolize the horrors of the Gulag was centered on the Kolyma gold-fields, where “outside work for prisoners was compulsory until the temperature reached –50C and the death rate among miners in the goldfields was estimated at about 30 per cent per annum.

Social conditions

The convicts in such camps were actively involved in all kinds of labor with one of them being logging (''lesopoval''). The working territory of logging presented by itself a square and was surrounded by forest clearing. Thus, all attempts to exit or escape from it were well observed from the four towers set at each of its corners.

''' During the transfer of the territory on the adjacent lot two of the towers were left in place and the other pair was reset at the new place. In such manner a new territory for logging was created. For the reason not to carry the tools to the living quarters and then back the very next day after a 12-hour shift, the guards let workers to leave them at a job site hidden. This was allowed, however, not out of humane intentions; it simply gave the guards an excuse to shoot the worker who was sent the next morning for the tools which were, of course, set beyond the logging territory as attempting to commit an escape.''''

When investigating the shooting of these "escaping" prisoners, the position of the dead body was usually the only factor considered. That the body would lay with its feet to the camp and its head away from it was considered sufficient evidence of an escape attempt. As a result, it was common practice for the guards to simply adjust the position of the body after killing a "runner" to ensure that the killing would be declared justified. There is some evidence that money rewards were given to any guards who shot an escaping prisoner, but the official rules (as seen below) state guards were fined for escaping prisoners.

Locals who captured a runaway were given rewards. Its also said that Gulags in colder areas, were less keen on "escaping" prisoners as they would die anyhow for the cold and severe winters. Prisoners who did escape without getting shot were often found dead miles away from the camp.

Geography

In the early days of Gulag, the locations for the camps were chosen primarily for their isolated locations. Remote monasteries in particular were frequently reused as sites for new camps. The site on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea is one of the earliest and also most noteworthy, taking root soon after the Revolution in 1918. The colloquial name for the islands, "Solovki", entered the vernacular as a synonym for the labor camp in general. It was presented to the world as an example of the new Soviet method for "re-education of class enemies" and reintegrating them through labor into Soviet society. Initially the inmates, largely Russian intelligentsia, enjoyed relative freedom (within the natural confinement of the islands). Local newspapers and magazines were published and even some scientific research was carried out (e.g., a local botanical garden was maintained, but unfortunately later lost completely). Eventually Solovki turned into an ordinary Gulag camp; in fact some historians maintain that it was a pilot camp of this type. See Solovki for more detail. In 1929 Maxim Gorky visited the camp and published an apology for it.

With the new emphasis on Gulag as the means of concentrating cheap labor, new camps were then constructed throughout the Soviet sphere of influence, wherever the economic task at hand dictated their existence (or was designed specifically to avail itself of them, such as the White Sea-Baltic Canal or the Baikal Amur Mainline), including facilities in big cities — parts of the famous Moscow Metro and the Moscow State University new campus were built by forced labor. Many more projects during the rapid industrialization of the 1930s, war-time and post-war periods were fulfilled on the backs of convicts, and the activity of Gulag camps spanned a wide cross-section of Soviet industry.

The majority of Gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of north-eastern Siberia (the best known clusters are ''Sevvostlag'' (''The North-East Camps'') along Kolyma river and ''Norillag'' near Norilsk) and in the south-eastern parts of the Soviet Union, mainly in the steppes of Kazakhstan (''Luglag'', ''Steplag'', ''Peschanlag''). A very precise map was made by the Memorial Foundation. These were vast and sparsely inhabited regions with no roads (in fact, the construction of the roads themselves was assigned to the inmates of specialized railroad camps) or sources of food, but rich in minerals and other natural resources (such as timber). However, camps were generally spread throughout the entire Soviet Union, including the European parts of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. There were also several camps located outside of the Soviet Union, in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Mongolia, which were under the direct control of the Gulag.

Not all camps were fortified; in fact some in Siberia were marked only by posts. Escape was deterred by the harsh elements, as well as tracking dogs that were assigned to each camp. While during the 1920s and 1930s native tribes often aided escapees, many of the tribes were also victimized by escaped thieves. Tantalized by large rewards as well, they began aiding authorities in the capture of Gulag inmates. Camp guards were also given stern incentive to keep their inmates in line at all costs; if a prisoner escaped under a guard's watch, the guard would often be stripped of his uniform and become a Gulag inmate himself. Further, if an escaping prisoner was shot, guards could be fined amounts that were often equivalent to one or two weeks wages.

In some cases, teams of inmates were dropped off in new territory with a limited supply of resources and left to set up a new camp or die. Sometimes it took several waves of colonists before any one group survived to establish the camp.

The area along the Indigirka river was known as ''the Gulag inside the Gulag''. In 1926, the Oimiakon (Оймякон) village in this region registered the record low temperature of −71.2 °C (−96 °F).

Under the supervision of Lavrenty Beria who headed both NKVD and the Soviet Atom bomb program until his demise in 1953, thousands of ''zeks'' were used to mine uranium ore and prepare test facilities on Novaya Zemlya, Vaygach Island, Semipalatinsk, among other sites.

Throughout the period of Stalinism, at least 476 separate camp administrations existed. Since many of these existed only for short periods of time, the number of camp administrations at any given point was lower. It peaked in the early 1950s, when there were more than a hundred different camp administrations across the Soviet Union. Most camp administrations oversaw not just one, but several single camp units, some as many as dozens or even hundreds. The infamous complexes were those at Kolyma, Norilsk, and Vorkuta, all in arctic or subarctic regions. However, prisoner mortality in Norilsk in most periods was actually lower than across the camp system as a whole.

Range of Gulag population figures

At the time of Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet figures indicate a population of 12 million passed through the Gulag system. Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko (1991) estimated as many as 16 million in 1938, charging Soviet archives are untrustworthy. Dallin and Nicolaevsky (1949) had estimated 10 million in 1940, later revised (1965) by Stanisław Swianiewicz, who provided most of their statistics, to 6.9 million. Later Soviet Gulag production figures (Jasny, 1952) implied no more than 3.5 million. Dmitri Volkogonov estimated the system could support 4-5 million in any single year.

Soviet archival figures present a number of challenges. While the NKVD compiled statistics, the NKVD itself was split into the Ministry of State Security (NGB) and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The NKVD and successor organizations controlled only part of the Gulag, and so their figures as an indication of total population would lead to an underestimation of the total. NKVD figures pertain to the Gulag labor camps which, depending on the time period, held between a third to three quarters of all prisoners, the rest being in prisons and labor colonies.

NKVD figures themselves are self-contradictory, with NKVD Census Board figures more than double those reported in other NKVD archives for a given period (Ellman notes the latter being the figures used by Getty, Rittersporn and Zemskov).

A specific example of the type of consistency challenges Soviet archival data pose are population figures reported by the Office of Railway Construction for just one year: 94,773 prisoners at the beginning of 1939, 69,569 at the end of 1939. Meanwhile, prisoners were reported as having worked an impossible 135,148,918 man-days—consistent with an average prisoner population four-and-a-half times larger were they to work every day of the year.

Soviet figures for how many passed through the Gulag, camps and labor colonies, include: 17 million in labor camps from 1937-1953Nikolai Shmelyov (1987), to Khrushchev 21.6 million repressed from 1929-1953Dmitri Volkogonov 19.8 million repressed from 1935-1941Olga Shatunovskaya, to Khrushchev

Dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose own estimate of those that had passed through the Gulag system was over 50 million, concluded on the matter of numbers: "We divide, we multiply, we sigh, we curse. But still and all, these are just numbers. They overwhelm the mind and then are easily forgotten."

Special institutions

Special camps or ''zones'' for children (Gulag jargon: , ''underaged''), for disabled (in Spassk), and for mothers () with babies. Camps for "wives of traitors of Motherland" — there was a special category of repression: "Traitor of Motherland Family Member" (). ''Sharashka'' (, ''the goofing-off place'') were in fact secret research laboratories, where the arrested and convicted scientists, some of them prominent, were anonymously developing new technologies, and also conducting basic research.

Influence

Culture

The Gulag spanned nearly four decades of Soviet and East European history and affected millions of individuals. Its cultural impact was enormous.

The Gulag has become a major influence on contemporary Russian thinking, and an important part of modern Russian folklore. Many songs by the authors-performers known as the ''bards'', most notably Vladimir Vysotsky and Alexander Galich, neither of whom ever served time in the camps, describe life inside the Gulag and glorified the life of "Zeks". Words and phrases which originated in the labor camps became part of the Russian/Soviet vernacular in the 1960s and 1970s. The memoirs of Alexander Dolgun, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov and Yevgenia Ginzburg, among others, became a symbol of defiance in Soviet society. These writings, particularly those of Solzhenitsyn, harshly chastised the Soviet people for their tolerance and apathy regarding the Gulag, but at the same time provided a testament to the courage and resolve of those who were imprisoned.

Another cultural phenomenon in the Soviet Union linked with the Gulag was the forced migration of many artists and other people of culture to Siberia. This resulted in a Renaissance of sorts in places like Magadan, where, for example, the quality of theatre production was comparable to Moscow's.

Literature

Many eyewitness accounts of Gulag prisoners have been published:

Victor Kravchenko wrote "I Chose Freedom" after defecting to the United States in 1944. As a leader of industrial plants he had encountered forced labor camps in various parts of the Soviet Union from 1935 to 1941. He describes a visit to one camp at Kemerovo on river Tom in Siberia. Factories paid a fixed sum to the KGB for every convict they employed.

Anatoli Granovsky wrote "I Was an NKVD Agent" after defecting to Sweden in 1946 and included his experiences seeing gulag prisoners as a young boy, as well as his experiences as a prisoner himself in 1939. Granovsky's father was sent to the gulag in 1937.

Julius Margolin's book ''A Travel to the Land Ze-Ka'' was finished in 1947, but it was impossible to publish such a book about the Soviet Union at the time, immediately after World War II.

Gustaw Herling-Grudziński wrote ''A World Apart'', which was translated into English by Andrzej Ciolkosz and published with an introduction by Bertrand Russell in 1951. By describing life in the gulag in a harrowing personal account, it provides an in-depth, original analysis of the nature of the Soviet communist system.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book ''The Gulag Archipelago'' was not the first literary work about labor camps. His previous book on the subject, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", about a typical day of the GULag inmate, was originally published in the most prestigious Soviet monthly, ''Novy Mir'', (''New World''), in November 1962, but was soon banned and withdrawn from all libraries. It was the first work to demonstrate the Gulag as an instrument of governmental repression against its own citizens on a massive scale. ''The First Circle'', an account of three days in the lives of prisoners in the ''Marfino'' ''sharashka'' or special prison was submitted for publication to the Soviet authorities shortly after ''One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' but was rejected and later published abroad in 1968.

János Rózsás, Hungarian writer, often referred to as the Hungarian Solzhenitsyn, wrote a lot of books and articles on the issue of GULag.

Zoltan Szalkai, Hungarian documentary filmmaker made several films of gulag camps.

Karlo Štajner, a Croatian communist active in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia and manager of Comintern Publishing House in Moscow from 1932–39, was arrested one night and taken from his Moscow home under accusation of anti-revolutionary activities. He spent the following 20 years in camps from Solovki to Norilsk. After USSR–Yugoslavian political normalization he was re-tried and quickly found innocent. He left the Soviet Union with his wife, who had been waiting for him for 20 years, in 1956 and spent the rest of his life in Zagreb, Croatia. He wrote an impressive book entitled ''7000 days in Siberia''.

''Dancing Under the Red Star'' by Karl Tobien (ISBN 1-4000-7078-3) tells the story of Margaret Werner, a young athletic girl who moves to Russia right before the start of Stalin's terror. She faces many hardships, as her father is taken away from her and imprisoned. Werner is the only American woman who survived the Gulag to tell about it.

''"Alexander Dolgun's Story: An American in the Gulag."'' (ISBN 0-394-49497-0), of a member of the US Embassy, and ''"I Was a Slave in Russia"'' (ISBN 0-815-95800-5), an American factory owner's son, were two more American citizens interned who wrote of their ordeal. Both were interned due to their American citizenship for about 8 years circa 1946–55.

Yevgenia Ginzburg wrote two famous books of her remembrances, ''Journey Into the Whirlwind'' and ''Within the Whirlwind''.

Savić Marković Štedimlija, pro-Croatian Montenegrin ideologist and Ustasha regime collaborator. Caught on the run in Austria by the Red Army in 1945, he was sent to the USSR and spent ten years in Gulag. After release, Marković wrote autobiographic account in two volumes titled ''Ten years in Gulag'' (''Deset godina u Gulagu'', Matica crnogorska, Podgorica, Montenegro 2004)

Sławomir Rawicz's book, ''The Long Walk'' is a controversial account of his escape from the gulag during World War II.

Movies and television

''The Way Back''

''As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me''

''Lost in Siberia''

Colonization

Soviet state documents show that among the goals of the gulag was colonisation of sparsely populated remote areas. To this end, the notion of "free settlement" was introduced.

When well-behaved persons had served the majority of their terms, they could be released for "free settlement" (вольное поселение, ''volnoye poseleniye'') outside the confinement of the camp. They were known as "free settlers" (вольнопоселенцы, ''volnoposelentsy'', not to be confused with the term ссыльнопоселенцы,''ssyl'noposelentsy'', "exile settlers"). In addition, for persons who served full term, but who were denied the free choice of place of residence, it was recommended to assign them for "free settlement" and give them land in the general vicinity of the place of confinement.

This implement was also inherited from the katorga system.

Life after term served

Persons who served a term in a camp or in a prison were restricted from taking a wide range of jobs. Concealment of a previous imprisonment was a triable offence. Persons who served terms as "politicals" were nuisances for "First Departments" (, outlets of the secret police at all enterprises and institutions), because former "politicals" had to be monitored.

Many people released from camps were restricted from settling in larger cities.

Lack of prosecution

It has often been asked why there has been nothing along the lines of the Nuremberg Trials for those guilty of atrocities at the Gulag camps. Two recent books, reviewed by Peter Rollberg in the ''Moscow Times'', cast some light on this. Tomasz Kizny's ''Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps 1917-1990'' details the history of the labor camps over the years while Oleg Khlevniuk's ''The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror'' presents records of confidential memos, official resolutions, individual testimonies and tabulated statistics. Rollberg explains how both books contribute to our understanding of why there were no post-Communism trials. "The gulag had already killed tens of thousands of its own most ardent killers. Again and again, yesterday's judges were declared today's criminals, so that Soviet society never had to own up to its millions of state-backed murders."

Archival documents

Statistical reports made by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD between the 1930s and 1950s are kept in the State Archive of the Russian Federation formerly called Central State Archive of the October Revolution (CSAOR). These documents were highly classified and inaccessible. Amid glasnost and democratization in the late 1980s, Viktor Zemskov and other Russian researchers managed to gain access to the documents and published the highly classified statistical data collected by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD and related to the number of the Gulag prisoners, special settlers, etc. In 1995, Zemskov wrote that foreign scientists have begun to be admitted to the restricted-access collection of these documents in the State Archive of the Russian Federation since 1992. However, the only one historian, namely Zemskov, was admitted to these archives, and later the archives were again “closed”, as Leonid Lopatnikov stated in his article published in 2009.

While considering the issue of reliability of the primary data provided by corrective labor institutions, it is necessary to take into account the following two circumstances. On the one hand, their administration was not interested to understate the number of prisoners in its reports, because it would have automatically led to a decrease in the food supply plan for camps, prisons, and corrective labor colonies. The decrement in food would have been accompanied by an increase in mortality that would have led to wrecking of the vast production program of the Gulag. On the other hand, overstatement of data of the number of prisoners also did not comply with departmental interests, because it was fraught with the same (i.e., impossible) increase in production tasks set by planning bodies. In those days, people were highly responsible for non-fulfilment of plan. It seems that a resultant of these objective departmental interests was a sufficient degree of reliability of the reports.

Between 1990 and 1992, the first precise statistical data on the Gulag based on the Gulag archives were published by Viktor Zemskov. However, his papers were criticized by Sergei Maksudov. In Maksudov's opinion, Lev Razgon and his followers including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did not envisage the total number of the camps very well and markedly exaggerated their size. At the same time, from their experience, they knew something extraordinarily important about the Archipelago, its diabolical anti-human nature. On the other hand, Viktor Zemskov, who published many documents by the NKVD and KGB, is very far from understanding of the Gulag essence and the nature of socio-political processes in the country. Without distinguishing the degree of accuracy and reliability of certain figures, without making a critical analysis of sources, without comparing new data with already known information, Zemskov absolutizes the published materials by presenting them as the ultimate truth. As a result, his attempts to make generalized statements with reference to a particular document, as a rule, do not hold water.

In response, Zemskov wrote that the charge that Zemskov allegedly did not compare new data with already known information could not be called fair. In his words, the trouble with most western writers is that they do not benefit from such comparisons. Zemskov added that when he tried not to overuse the juxtaposition of new information with “old” one, it was only because of a sense of delicacy, not to once again psychologically traumatize the researchers whose works used incorrect figures, as it turned out after the publication of the statistics by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD.

According to French historian Nicolas Werth, the mountains of the materials of the Gulag archives, which are stored in funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation and are being constantly exposed during the last fifteen years, represent only a very small part of bureaucratic prose of immense size left over the decades of “creativity” by the dull and reptile organization managing the Gulag. In many cases, local camp archives, which had been stored in sheds, barracks, or other rapidly disintegrating buildings, simply disappeared in the same way as most of the camp buildings did.

In 2004 and 2005, some archival documents were published in the edition ''Istoriya Stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh — Pervaya Polovina 1950-kh Godov. Sobranie Dokumentov v 7 Tomakh'' (''The History of Stalin’s Gulag. From the Late 1920s to the First Half of the 1950s. Collection of Documents in Seven Volumes'') wherein each of its seven volumes covered a particular issue indicated in the title of the volume: the first volume has the title ''Massovye Repressii v SSSR'' (''Mass Repression in the USSR''), the second volume has the title ''Karatelnaya Sistema. Struktura i Kadry'' (''Punitive System. Structure and Cadres''), the third volume has the title ''Ekonomika Gulaga'' (''Economy of the Gulag''), the forth volume has the title ''Naselenie Gulaga. Chislennost i Usloviya Soderzhaniya'' (''The Population of the Gulag. The Number and Conditions of Confinement''), the fifth volume has the title ''Specpereselentsy v SSSR'' (''Specsettlers in the USSR''), the sixth volume has the title ''Vosstaniya, Bunty i Zabastovki Zaklyuchyonnykh'' (''Uprisings, Riots, and Strikes of Prisoners''), the seventh volume has the title ''Sovetskaya Pepressivno-karatelnaya Politika i Penitentsiarnaya Sistema. Annotirovanniy Ukazatel Del GA RF'' (''Soviet Repressive and Punitive Policy. Annotated Index of Cases of the SA RF''). The edition contains the brief introductions by the two “patriarchs of the Gulag science”, Robert Conquest and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and 1431 documents, the overwhelming majority of which were obtained from funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

Gulag memorials

Both Moscow and St. Petersburg have memorials to the victims of the Gulag made of boulders from the Solovki camp — the first prison camp in the Gulag system. Moscow's memorial is on Lubyanka Square, the site of the headquarters of the NKVD. People gather at these memorials every year on the Day of Victims of the Repression (October 30).

Gulag Museum

Moscow has the State Gulag Museum whose director is Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko.

Notable Gulag prisoners

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Vladimir Petrov

Nikolai Getman

Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky

Sergey Korolyov

Varlam Shalamov

Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli

Fr. Walter Ciszek S.J.

See also

Index of Soviet Union-related articles

List of Gulag camps

List of uprisings in the Gulag

101st kilometre

Article 58

Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union

Kengir uprising

Kolyma

Mass graves in the Soviet Union

Memorial

Nazino affair

Norilsk uprising, an uprising in Norilsk "Gorlag" (mining camp), 1953

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

Population transfer in the Soviet Union

Punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union

Russian Mafia

Soviet political repression

Thief in law

USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941)

Letters from Russian Prisons

;Forced labor camps elsewhere:

Devil's Island (France)

The Vietnamese Gulag

Extermination through labor (Nazi Germany)

Danube-Black Sea Canal (Communist Romania)

Katorga (Russian Empire)

Laogai (China)

Goli Otok (Yugoslavia)

Yodok (North Korea)

Camp 22 (North Korea)

References

Further reading

;Books

Anne Applebaum, ''Gulag: A History'', Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pp., ISBN 0-7679-0056-1.

Walter Ciszek, ''With God in Russia'', Ignatius Press, 1997, 433 pp., ISBN 0-8987-0574-6.

Simon Ertz, ''Zwangsarbeit im stalinistischen Lagersystem: Eine Untersuchung der Methoden, Strategien und Ziele ihrer Ausnutzung am Beispiel Norilsk, 1935-1953'', Duncker & Humblot, 2006, 273 pp., ISBN 9783428118632.

Orlando Figes, ''The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia'', Allen Lane, 2007, hardcover, 740 pp., ISBN 0141013516.

J. Arch Getty, Oleg V. Naumov, ''The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939'', Yale University Press, 1999, 635 pp., ISBN 0-300-07772-6.

Jehanne M. Gheith and Katherine R. Jolluck. ''Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Detention and Exile (Palgrave Studies in Oral History).'' Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. ISBN 0230610633

Slawomir Rawicz. "The Long Walk". 1995. ISBN 1558216847

Paul R. Gregory, Valery Lazarev, eds, ''The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag'', Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8179-3942-3, full text available online at "Hoover Books Online"

Jan T. Gross (intro) and Nicolas Werth, ''Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity).'' Princeton University Press, 2007. 248 pp., ISBN 0691130833.

Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, ''A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II'', Penguin, 1996, 284 pp., ISBN 0-14-025184-7.

Adam Hochschild, ''The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 304 pp., paperback: ISBN 0-618-25747-0.

Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror, Yale University Press, 2004, hardcover, 464 pp., ISBN 0-300-09284-9.

Tomasz Kizny, ''Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps 1917-1990'', Firefly Books Ltd., 2004, 496 pp., ISBN 1-55297-964-4.

''Istorija stalinskogo Gulaga: konec 1920-kh - pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov; sobranie dokumentov v 7 tomach'', ed. by V. P. Kozlov et al., Moskva: ROSSPEN 2004-5, 7 vols. ISBN 5-8243-0604-4

Jacques Rossi, ''The Gulag Handbook: An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Soviet Penitentiary Institutions and Terms Related to the Forced Labor Camps'', 1989, ISBN 1-55778-024-2.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

*The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, 660 pp., ISBN 0-06-080332-0.

*The Gulag Archipelago: Two, Harper & Row, 712 pp., ISBN 0-06-080345-2.

Karl Tobien. ''Dancing Under the Red Star: The Extraordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin's Gulag.'' WaterBrook Press, 2006. ISBN 1400070783

Nicolas Werth, "A State Against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union, in Stephane Courtois et al., eds., ''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'', Harvard University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-674-07608-7, pp. 33–260.

"The Literature of Stalin's Repressions" in Azerbaijan International, Vol 14:1 (Spring 2006)

;Memoirs

Ayyub Baghirov (1906-1973), Bitter Days of Kolyma

Murtuz Sadikhli (1927-1997), Memory of Blood

Ummugulsum Sadigzade (died 1944), Prison Diary: Tears Are My Only Companions

Ummugulsum Sadigzade (died 1944), Letters from Prison to her Young Children

Remembering Stalin - Azerbaijan International 13.4 (Winter 2005)

Anne Applebaum (foreword) and Paul Hollander (introduction and editor). ''From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States.'' Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006. ISBN 1932236783 (from the annotation: "more than forty dramatic personal memoirs of Communist violence and repression from political prisoners across the globe")

Janusz Bardach, ''Man Is Wolf To Man: Surviving the Gulag.'' University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0520221524

Alexander Dolgun, Patrick Watson, "Alexander Dolgun's story: An American in the Gulag", NY, Knopf, 1975, 370 pp., ISBN 978-0394494975.

Eugenia Ginzburg, ''Journey into the whirlwind'', Harvest/HBJ Book, 2002, 432 pp., ISBN 0156027518.

Eugenia Ginzburg, ''Within the Whirlwind'', Harvest/HBJ Book, 1982, 448 pp., ISBN 0156976498.

Jerzy Gliksman, ''Tell the West: An account of his experiences as a slave laborer in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics'', ''Gresham Press'', 358pp. (abridged edition: New York : National Committee for a Free Europe, c 1948, 95pp.)

Julius Margolin, ПУТЕШЕСТВИЕ В СТРАНУ ЗЭ-КА ''A Travel to the Land Ze-Ka'', full text, according to the original manuscript (book written in 1947-47, first printed in 1952)

Fyodor V. Mochulsky, ''Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir'', Oxford University Press, 272 pp., the first memoir from an NKVD employee translated into English

Tamara Petkevich, ‘’Memoir of Gulag Actress‘’, Northen Illinois University, 2010

John H. Noble, ''I Was a Slave in Russia'', Broadview, Illinois: Cicero Bible Press, 1961).

Varlam Shalamov, ''Kolyma Tales'', Penguin Books, 1995, 528 pp., ISBN 0-14-018695-6.

Danylo Shumuk,

* Life sentence: Memoirs of a Ukrainian political prisoner, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Study, 1984, 401 pp., ISBN 978-0920862179.

* Za Chidnim Obriyam - (Beyond The Eastern Horizon),Paris, Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1974, 447 pp.

Hava Volovich, My Tale is Told: Women's Memoirs of Gulag, by Simeon Vilensky, Indiana University Press, 1999

Solzhenitsyn's, Shalamov's, Ginzburg's works at Lib.ru (in original Russian)

Вернон Кресс (alias of Петр Зигмундович Демант) "Зекамерон XX века", autobiographical novel

Бирюков А.М. Колымские истории: очерки. Новосибирск, 2004

;Fiction

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

*One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Signet Classic, 158 pp., ISBN 0-451-52310-5.

*The First Circle, Northwestern University Press, 580 pp., ISBN 978-0810115903.

Chabua Amirejibi, ''Gora Mborgali''. Tbilisi, Georgia: Chabua, 2001, 650 pp., ISBN 99940-734-1-9.

Mehdi Husein (1905-1965), "Underground Rivers Flow Into the Sea" (Excerpts - First Novel About Exile to the Gulag by an Azerbaijani Writer)

Martin Amis, ''House of Meetings''. New York: Vintage Books, 2006, 242 pp., ISBN 978-1-4000-9601-5.

Herta Müller, ''Everything I Possess I Carry With Me''

Martin Booth, ''The Industry Of Souls''. United Kingdom: Dewi Lewis Publishing, 1998, 250 pp., ISBN 0-312-26753-3.

;Movies and television

''The Way Back'' 2010 war drama film about a group of prisoners who escape from a Siberian Gulag camp during World War II.

External links

GULAG: Many Days, Many Lives, Online Exhibit, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

Gulag: Forced Labor Camps, Online Exhibition, Open Society Archives

The website of the State Museum of GULAG History in Moscow

The website of the Virtual Gulag Museum projected by the scientific information center Memorial

Sound Archives. European Memories of the Gulag

Gulag prisoners at work, 1936-1937 Photoalbum at NYPL Digital Gallery

The GULAG, Revelations from the Russian Archives at Library of Congress

GULAG 113, Canadian documentary film about Estonians in the GULAG, website includes photos video.

Gulag Photo album (prisoners of Kolyma and Chukotka labor camps, 1951-55)

Pages about the Kolyma camps and the evolution of GULAG

The Soviet Gulag Era in Pictures - 1927 through 1953

The Economics of the GULAG

Stories from the Gulag Dossier by Radio France Internationale in English

interactive map of GULAG (in German)

''I Was a Slave in Russia: An American Tells His Story'' Archive.org online ebook.

''Recollections of Soviet Labor Camps, 1949-1955'' Archive.org online ebook.

Category:Joseph Stalin Category:Soviet phraseology Category:Russian loanwords Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union Category:Political repression Category:Penal labor Category:Soviet law Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia Category:Imprisonment and detention Category:Gulag detainees

af:Goelag ar:جولاج br:Goulag bg:ГУЛАГ ca:Gulag cv:Гулаг cs:Gulag da:Gulag de:Gulag et:GULAG el:Γκουλάγκ es:Gulag eo:Gulago eu:Gulag fa:گولاگ fr:Goulag ga:GULag ko:굴락 hi:गुलाग hr:Gulag io:Gulag id:Gulag it:Gulag he:גולאג ka:გულაგი la:Gulagia lv:Gulags lt:Gulagas hu:Gulag nl:Goelag ja:グラグ no:Gulag nn:Gulag pl:Gułag pt:Gulag ro:Gulag ru:ГУЛаг sc:Gulag scn:Gulag simple:Gulag sk:Gulag (1930 – 1960) sl:Gulag fi:Gulag sv:Gulag tr:GULAG uk:ГУЛАГ ur:گولاگ vi:Trại cải tạo lao động của Liên Xô zh:古拉格

name	Harlan Ellison
pseudonym	Cordwainer BirdNalrah NosilleSley HarsonPaul Merchant
birth name	Harlan Jay Ellison
birth date	May 27, 1934
birth place	Cleveland, Ohio
occupation	Author, screenwriter
nationality	American
genre	Speculative fiction, Science fiction, Fantasy, Crime, Mystery, Horror, film and television criticism, essayist
movement	New Wave
influences	Edgar Allan PoeTheodore SturgeonFranz KafkaJorge Luis BorgesFrederic ProkoschJim ThompsonGerald KershCornell WoolrichFritz LeiberIsaac Asimov
influenced	Neil GaimanOctavia E. ButlerDan SimmonsJames Cameron
website	http://harlanellison.com/home.htm }}

Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.

His published works include over 1,000 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. He was editor and anthologist for two ground-breaking science fiction anthologies, ''Dangerous Visions'' and ''Again, Dangerous Visions''. Ellison has won numerous awards – more awards for imaginative literature than any other living author – including multiple Hugos, Nebulas and Edgars.

Early life and career

Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 27, 1934. His Jewish-American family subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949, following his father's death. As a child, he had a brief career performing in minstrel shows. He frequently ran away from home, taking an array of odd jobs—including, by age eighteen, "tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House".

Ellison attended Ohio State University for 18 months (1951–53) before being expelled. He has said that the expulsion was a result of his hitting a professor who had denigrated his writing ability, and that over the next forty-odd years he had sent that professor a copy of every story he published.

Ellison moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue a writing career, primarily in science fiction. Over the next two years, he published more than 100 short stories and articles. He married Charlotte Stein in 1956 but they divorced four years later. He said of the marriage, "four years of hell as sustained as the whine of a generator."

In 1957, Ellison decided to write about youth gangs. To research the issue, he joined a street gang in the Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York area, under the name "Cheech Beldone". His subsequent writings on the subject include the novel, ''Web of the City/Rumble'', and the collection, ''The Deadly Streets'', and also compose part of his memoir, ''Memos from Purgatory''.

Ellison was drafted into the United States Army, serving from 1957 to 1959. In 1960, he returned to New York, living at 95 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Moving to Chicago, Ellison wrote for William Hamling's ''Rogue'' magazine. As a book editor at Hamling's Regency Books, Hamling published novels and anthologies by such writers as B. Traven, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Bloch and Philip José Farmer, Clarence Cooper Jr and Ellison.

In the late 1950s, Ellison wrote a number of erotic stories, such as "God Bless the Ugly Virgin" and "Tramp", which were later reprinted in Los Angeles-based girlie magazines. That was his first use of the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird. He used the name in July and August 1957, in two journals, each of which had accepted two of his stories. In each journal, one story was published under the name Harlan Ellison, and the other under Cordwainer Bird. Later, as discussed in the Controversy section below, he used the pseudonym when he disagreed with the use or editing of his work.

In 1960, Ellison married Billie Joyce Sanders, his second wife, but they divorced in 1963.

Hollywood and beyond

Ellison moved to California in 1962, and subsequently began to sell his writing to Hollywood. He wrote the screenplay for ''The Oscar'', starring Stephen Boyd and Elke Sommer. Ellison also sold scripts to many television shows: ''The Flying Nun'', ''Burke's Law'', ''Route 66,'' ''The Outer Limits'', ''Star Trek'', ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'', ''Cimarron Strip'' and ''The Alfred Hitchcock Hour''.

During the late 1960s, Ellison wrote a column about television for the ''Los Angeles Free Press''. Titled "The Glass Teat", the column addressed political and social issues and their portrayal on television at the time. The columns were gathered into two collections, ''The Glass Teat'' and ''The Other Glass Teat''.

He was a participant in the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Also in 1966, he married his third wife, Lory Patrick. The marriage lasted only seven weeks.

In 1966, in an article that ''Esquire'' magazine would later name as the best magazine piece ever written, the journalist Gay Talese wrote about the goings-on around the enigmatic Frank Sinatra. The article, entitled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", briefly describes a clash between the young Harlan Ellison and Frank Sinatra, when the crooner took exception to Ellison's boots during a billiards game. Talese is quoted as saying of the incident, "Sinatra probably forgot about it at once, but Ellison will remember it all his life."

Ellison continued to publish short fiction and nonfiction pieces in various publications, including some of his best known stories. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965) is a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967) is an allegory of Hell, where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing computer throughout eternity. The story was the basis of a 1995 computer game, with Ellison participating in the game's design and providing the voice of the god-computer AM. "A Boy and His Dog" examines the nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-apocalyptic world. It was made into the 1975 film of the same name, starring Don Johnson.

He also edited the influential science fiction anthology ''Dangerous Visions'' (1967), which collected stories commissioned by Ellison, accompanied by his commentary-laden biographical sketches of the authors. He challenged the authors to write stories at the edge of the genre. Many of the stories went beyond the traditional boundaries of science fiction pioneered by respected old school editors such as John W. Campbell, Jr. As an editor, Ellison was influenced and inspired by experimentation in the popular literature of the time, such as the beats. A sequel, ''Again Dangerous Visions'', was published in 1972. A third volume, ''The Last Dangerous Visions'', has been repeatedly postponed (see Controversy).

In 1976, Ellison married his fourth wife, Lori Horowitz. He was 41 and she was 19. He said of the marriage, "I was desperately in love with her, but it was a stupid marriage on my part." They were divorced after eight months.

Ellison served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series ''The Twilight Zone'' (1980s version) and ''Babylon 5''. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he has voice-over credits for shows including ''The Pirates of Dark Water'', ''Mother Goose and Grimm'', ''Space Cases'', ''Phantom 2040'', and ''Babylon 5'', as well as making an onscreen appearance in the ''Babylon 5'' episode "The Face of the Enemy".

Ellison has commented on a great many movies and television programs (see ''The Glass Teat'' and ''The Other Glass Teat'' for television criticism and commentary; see ''Harlan Ellison's Watching'' for movie criticism and commentary), both negatively and positively.

He does all his writing on a manual Olympia typewriter, and has a substantial distaste for personal computers and most of the Internet.

On September 7, 1986, Ellison married Susan Toth (his fifth and current wife), whom he had met in Scotland the year before.

For two years, beginning in 1986, Ellison took over as host of the Friday-night radio program, ''Hour 25'' on Pacifica Radio station KPFK-FM, Los Angeles, after the death of Mike Hodel, the show's founder and original host. Ellison had been a frequent and favorite guest on the long-running program. In one episode, he brought in his typewriter and proceeded to write a new short story live on the air (he titled the story "Hitler Painted Roses"). ''Hour 25'' also served as the inspiration for his story, "The Hour That Stretches".

Ellison's 1992 short story "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" was selected for inclusion in the 1993 edition of ''The Best American Short Stories''.

Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on his first day after being overheard by Roy O. Disney in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters. He recounted this incident in his book ''Stalking the Nightmare'', as part 3 of an essay titled "The 3 Most Important Things in Life". At a talk at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Ellison stated he was walking the halls of Disney and was bored, until he found a screwdriver, at which time he walked throughout the facility tightening every screw he saw until he was confronted in the basement. His termination came later that day.

Ellison has provided vocal narration to numerous audiobooks, both of his own writing and others. Ellison has helped narrate books by authors such as Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Williamson and Terry Pratchett.

Ellison lives in Los Angeles, California with Susan, his fifth wife. In 1994, he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery.

He had his own name trademarked in 2005, registered by The Kilimanjaro Corporation, which Ellison owns, and under which all his work is copyrighted.

Ellison recently voiced himself as a character on the show ''Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated'', in the H. P. Lovecraft-inspired episode "The Shrieking Madness".

Pseudonyms

Ellison has on occasion used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert members of the public to situations in which he feels his creative contribution to a project has been mangled beyond repair by others, typically Hollywood producers or studios (see also Alan Smithee). The first such work to which he signed the name was "The Price of Doom," an episode of ''Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea'' (though it was misspelled as Cord Wainer Bird in the credits). An episode of ''Burke's Law'' ("Who Killed Alex Debbs?") credited to Ellison contains a ''character'' given this name.

The "Cordwainer Bird" moniker is a tribute to fellow SF writer Paul M. A. Linebarger, better known by his pen name, Cordwainer Smith. The origin of the word "cordwainer" is shoemaker (from working with cordovan leather for shoes). The term used by Linebarger was meant to imply the industriousness of the pulp author. Ellison has said, in interviews and in his writing, that his version of the pseudonym was meant to mean "a shoemaker for birds". Since he has used the pseudonym mainly for works he wants to distance himself from, it may be understood to mean that "this work is for the birds" or that it is of as much use as shoes to a bird. Stephen King once said he thought that it meant that Ellison was giving people who mangled his work a literary version of "the bird" (given credence by Ellison himself in his own essay titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto", describing his experience with the ''Starlost'' television series).

The Bird moniker has since become a character in one of Ellison's own stories, not without some prompting. In his book ''Strange Wine'', Ellison explains the origins of the Bird and goes on to state that Philip Jose Farmer wrote Cordwainer into the Wold Newton family the latter writer had developed. The thought of such a whimsical object lesson being related to such lights as Doc Savage, the Shadow, Tarzan, and all the other pulp heroes prompted Ellison to play with the concept, resulting in ''The New York Review of Bird'', in which an annoyed Bird uncovers the darker secrets of the New York Literary Establishment before beginning a pulpish slaughter of same.

Controversies

Temperament

Ellison has a reputation for being abrasive and argumentative. He has generally agreed with this assessment, and a dust jacket from one of Ellison's books described him as "possibly the most contentious person on Earth". Ellison has filed numerous grievance filings and lawsuit attempts that have been characterized as both justifiable and frivolous. His friend Isaac Asimov noted "Harlan uses his gifts for colorful and variegated invective on those who irritate him — intrusive fans, obdurate editors, callous publishers, offensive strangers." Another friend, writer Robert Bloch, spoke at a roast for Ellison, saying that other people take infinite pains; "Harlan gives them."

He appeared on ''Politically Incorrect'', and had a regular spot on the ''Sci-Fi Buzz'' program on the fledgling Sci Fi Channel. Ellison's segments were broadcast from 1994 to 1997. Some transcripts are available. Ellison was also a frequent visitor on Tom Snyder's ''The Tomorrow Show'' in the late 1970s and ''The Late Late Show'' in the 1990s.

Aggiecon I

In 1969, Ellison was Guest of Honor at Texas A&M; University's first science fiction convention, Aggiecon, where he reportedly referred to the Corps of Cadets as ''"...America's next generation of Nazis...",'' inspired in part by the continuing Vietnam War. Although the university was no longer solely a military school (as of 1965), the studentry was predominantly made up of cadet members. Between Ellison's anti-military remarks and a food-fight that broke out in the ballroom of the hotel where the gathering was held (although according to Ellison in 2000, the food-fight actually started in a Denny's because the staff disappeared and they could not get their check), the school's administration almost refused to approve the science fiction convention the next year, and no guest of honor was invited for the next two Aggiecons. However, Ellison was subsequently invited back as Guest of Honor for Aggiecon V (1974) and Aggiecon XXXI (2000).

''The Starlost''

The screenplay for his projected television series ''The Starlost'' was also given a Writers Guild Award, though the actual series, produced in 1973-74, was so altered by the producers that Ellison had his name removed from the credits and replaced with the pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" (see above).

''Star Trek''

Ellison has repeatedly criticized how ''Star Trek'' creator and producer Gene Roddenberry (and others) rewrote his original script for the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Ellison's original work included a subplot involving drug dealing aboard the ''Enterprise'' and other elements that Roddenberry rejected. Despite his objections, he kept his legal name on the result instead of using his "Cordwainer Bird" ''nom-de-plume''. Ellison's original script was eventually reprinted in the 1976 collection ''Six Science Fiction Plays'', edited by Roger Elwood. In 1995, White Wolf Publishing released ''Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever'', a book that included the original script, several story treatments, and a long introductory essay by Ellison explaining his position on what he called a "fatally inept treatment". Both versions won prestigious awards.

On March 13, 2009, Ellison sued CBS Paramount Television, seeking payment of 25% of net receipts from merchandising, publishing, and other income from the episode since 1967; the suit also names the Writers Guild of America for allegedly failing to act on Ellison's behalf. On October 23, 2009, ''Variety'' magazine reported that a settlement had been reached.

''The Last Dangerous Visions''

''The Last Dangerous Visions'' (TLDV), the third volume of Ellison's anthology series, has become science fiction's most famous unpublished book. It was originally announced for publication in 1973, but has not seen print to date. Nearly 150 writers (many now dead) submitted works for the volume. In 1993 Ellison threatened to sue New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) for publishing "Himself in Anachron", a short story written by Cordwainer Smith and sold to Ellison for the book by his widow, but later reached an amicable settlement.

British science fiction author Christopher Priest critiqued Ellison's editorial practices in an article entitled "The Book on the Edge of Forever", later expanded into a book. Priest documented a half-dozen unfulfilled promises by Ellison to publish ''TLDV'' within a year of the statement. Priest claims he submitted a story at Ellison's request which Ellison retained for several months until Priest withdrew the story and demanded that Ellison return the manuscript. Ellison has a record of fulfilling obligations in other instances (though sometimes, as with ''Harlan Ellison's Hornbook'' for Mirage Press, several decades after the contract was signed), including to writers whose stories he solicited.

''I, Robot''

Shortly after the release of ''Star Wars'' (1977), Ben Roberts contacted Ellison to develop a script based on Isaac Asimov's ''I, Robot'' short story collection for Warner Brothers. In a meeting with studio head Robert Shapiro, Ellison concluded that Shapiro was commenting on the script without having read it, and accused him of having the "intellectual capacity of an artichoke". Shortly afterwards, Ellison was dropped from the project. Without Ellison, the film came to a dead end, because subsequent scripts were unsatisfactory to potential directors. After a change in studio heads, Warner allowed Ellison's script to be serialized in ''Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'' and in book form. The 2004 film ''I, Robot'', starring Will Smith, has no connection to Ellison's script.

Allegations of assault on Charles Platt

In the 1980s, Ellison allegedly publicly assaulted author and critic Charles Platt at the Nebula Awards banquet. Platt did not pursue legal action against Ellison, and the two men later signed a "non-aggression pact", promising never to discuss the incident again nor to have any contact with one another. Platt claims that Ellison has often publicly boasted about the incident.

Lawsuit against Fantagraphics

On September 20, 2006, Ellison sued Fantagraphics, a comic book publisher, claiming they had defamed him in their book ''Comics As Art (We told you so)''.

The book recounts the history of Fantagraphics and discussed a lawsuit that resulted from a 1980 Ellison interview with Fantagraphics' industry news magazine, ''The Comics Journal''. In this interview Ellison referred to comic book writer Michael Fleisher, calling him "bugfuck" and "derange-o". Fleisher lost his libel suit against Ellison and Fantagraphics on December 9, 1986.

Ellison, after reading unpublished drafts of the book on Fantagraphics's website, believed that he had been defamed by several anecdotes related to this incident. He sued in the Superior Court for the State of California, in Santa Monica. Fantagraphics attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed. In their motion to dismiss, Fantagraphics argued that the statements were both their personal opinions and generally believed to be true anecdotes.

On February 12, 2007, the presiding judge ruled against Fantagraphics' anti-SLAPP motion for dismissal. On June 29, 2007, Ellison claimed that the litigation had been resolved pending Fantagraphics' removal of all references to the case from their website. No money or apologies changed hands in the settlement as posted on August 17, 2007.

With Connie Willis at Hugo Awards 2006

On August 26, 2006, during the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, Ellison grabbed award-winning novelist Connie Willis' breast while on stage at the Hugo Awards ceremony. Ellen Datlow described this as "a schtick of Harlan acting like a baby". Patrick Nielsen Hayden described this as "pathetic and nasty and sad and most of us didn't want to watch it".

Ellison responded three days later, writing, "I was unaware of any problem proceeding from my intendedly-childlike grabbing of Connie Willis's left breast, as she was exhorting me to behave." He also posted that "I'm glad, at last, to have transcended your expectations. I stand naked and defenseless before your absolutely correct chiding." On August 31 he posted: "Would you be slightly less self-righteous and chiding if I told you there was NO grab…there was NO grope…there was NO fondle...there was the slightest touch. A shtick, a gag between friends, absolutely NO sexual content. How about it, Mark: after playing straight man to Connie's very frequently demeaning public jackanapery toward me—including treating me with considerable disrespect at the Grand Master Awards Weekend, where she put a chair down in front of her lectern as Master of Ceremonies, and made me sit there like a naughty child throughout her long 'roast' of my life and career—for more than 25 years, without once complaining, whaddaya think, Mark, am I even a leetle bit entitled to think that Connie likes to play, and geez ain't it sad that as long as SHE sets the rules for play, and I'm the village idiot, she's cool … but gawd forbid I change the rules and play MY way for a change …", and complained that Willis had not called him to discuss the matter.

Copyright suits

Ellison claimed that James Cameron's film ''The Terminator'' drew from material from Ellison's "Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand" episodes of ''The Outer Limits''. Hemdale, the production company and the distributor Orion Pictures, settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, "acknowledging" the work of Ellison at the end of the film. Cameron has labeled Ellison's claim a "nuisance suit" and referred to Ellison as a "parasite who can kiss my ass."

On April 24, 2000 Ellison sued Stephen Robertson for posting four stories to the newsgroup "alt.binaries.e-book" without authorization. The other defendants were AOL and RemarQ, internet service providers whose only involvement was running servers hosting the newsgroup. Ellison claimed that they had failed to stop the alleged copyright infringement in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Robertson and RemarQ first settled with Ellison, and then AOL likewise settled with Ellison in June 2004, under conditions that were not made public. Since those settlements Ellison has initiated legal action and/or takedown notices against more than 240 people who have distributed his writings on the Internet, saying, "If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump".

Bibliography

Novels and novellas

''Web of the City'' (1958) (originally published as ''Rumble'')

''The Man With Nine Lives'' (1960) (as this novel has never been reprinted there is no edition in existence bearing the author's preferred title ''The Sound of a Scythe'')

''Spider Kiss'' (1961) (originally published as ''Rockabilly'')

''Doomsman'' (1967)

"A Boy and His Dog" (1969) (made into a film)

''The Starlost#1: Phoenix Without Ashes'' (1975) (adaptation by Edward Bryant of Ellison's TV pilot script)

''All the Lies That are My Life'' (1980) (later included in the author's 1980 collection ''Shatterday'')

''Run for the Stars'' (1991) (a 1957 novella here republished in a preferred text edition as part of a Tor Double)

''Mefisto in Onyx'' (1993) (later included in the author's 1997 collection ''Slippage'')

Short story collections

''A Touch of Infinity'' (1958)

''The Deadly Streets'' (1958)

''Sex Gang'' (1959) (as by Paul Merchant)

''Children of the Streets'' (1961) (originally published as ''The Juvies'')

''Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation'' (1961)

''Ellison Wonderland'' (1962) (also published as ''Earthman, Go Home!'' Ellison also refers to his home in Sherman Oaks, California as "Ellison Wonderland."

''Paingod and Other Delusions'' (1965)

''I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream'' (1967)

''From the Land of Fear'' (1967)

''Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled'' (1968)

''The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World'' (1969)

''Over the Edge'' (1970)

''Partners in Wonder'' (1971) (collaborations with 14 other writers)

''Approaching Oblivion'' (1974)

''Deathbird Stories'' (1975)

''No Doors, No Windows'' (1975)

''Strange Wine'' (1978)

''Shatterday'' (1980)(reissued 2007 by Edgeworks Abbey/Tachyon Publications)

''Stalking the Nightmare'' (1982)

''Angry Candy'' (1988)

''Mind Fields'' (1994) (33 stories inspired by the art of Jacek Yerka)

''Slippage'' (1997)

''Troublemakers'' (2001) (collection produced for the Young Adult market and featuring, for the most part, previously collected material)

Retrospectives and omnibus collections

''Alone Against Tomorrow: a 10-Year Survey'' (1971) (published in the UK in two volumes as ''All the Sounds of Fear'' (1973) and ''The Time of the Eye'' (1974))

''The Fantasies of Harlan Ellison'' (1979) (contains "Paingod and Other Delusions" (1965) and "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967))

''The Essential Ellison: a 35-Year Retrospective'' (1987) (edited by Terry Dowling with Richard Delap and Gil Lamont)

''Dreams With Sharp Teeth'' (1991) (contains "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967), ''Deathbird Stories'' (1975) and ''Shatterday'' (1980))

''Edgeworks. 1'' (1996) (contains "Over the Edge" (1970) and "An Edge in My Voice" (1985))

''Edgeworks. 2'' (1996) (contains "Spider Kiss" (1961) and "Stalking the Nightmare" (1982))

''Edgeworks. 3'' (1997) (contains "The Harlan Ellison Hornbook" (1990) and "Harlan Ellison's Movie" (1990))

''Edgeworks. 4'' (1997) (contains ''Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled'' (1968) and ''The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World'' (1969))

''The Essential Ellison: a 50-Year Retrospective Revised & Expanded'' (2001) (edited by Terry Dowling with Richard Delap and Gil Lamont)

''The Glass Teat Omnibus: The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat'' (2011) (Published by Charnel House, handmade books published in a very limited edition, in June, with an Audio recording, dated Feb. 2011, of Ellison reading "Welcome to the Gulag", a special introduction written just for this new, updated, publication of the essays and criticism on television).

Note: the White Wolf Edgeworks Series was originally scheduled to consist of 31 titles reprinted over the course of 20 omnibus volumes. Although an ISBN was created for ''Edgeworks. 5'' (1998), which was to contain both ''Glass Teat'' books, this title never appeared. The series is noted for its numerous typographical errors.

Nonfiction

''Memos from Purgatory'' (1961)

''The Glass Teat'' (1970) (essays of opinion on television, 1968–1970)

''The Other Glass Teat'' (1975) (further essays of opinion on television, 1970–1972)

''The Book of Ellison'' (1978) (edited by Andrew Porter)

''Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed'' (1984) (edited by Marty Clark)

''An Edge in My Voice'' (1985)

''Harlan Ellison's Watching'' (1989)(reissued 2008 by M Press)

''The Harlan Ellison Hornbook'' (1990)

Published screenplays and teleplays

''Phoenix Without Ashes'' (original, unaired and unaltered, Writers Guild of America Award-winning teleplay) published in ''Faster Than Light'' (1975, Haper & Row), alongside original stories by George R.R. Martin and Ben Bova, and reprints by Isaac Asimov.

''I, Robot'' (1994) (based on stories by Isaac Asimov, illustrated by Mark Zug)

''The City on the Edge of Forever'' (1996) (Star Trek episode, original screenplay, with commentary. For an in-depth review of this book see . This script was also published in ''Six Science Fiction Plays'' (1976) edited by Roger Elwood)

''Harlan Ellison's Movie'' (1990) (unproduced feature-length screenplay serialised in Ellison's weekly newspaper column ''The Harlan Ellison Hornbook'' and collected in the omnibus volume ''Edgeworks. 3'' (1996))

''Flintlock'' (1987) (unproduced pilot teleplay for a proposed 1972 TV series based on James Coburn's character in ''Our Man Flint'', published in both editions of the retrospective volume ''The Essential Ellison'' (1987, 2001))

''The Whimper of Whipped Dogs'' (1975) (teleplay produced in the TV series ''The Young Lawyers'', serialised in Ellison's weekly newspaper column ''The Glass Teat'' and collected in ''The Other Glass Teat'' (1975); unrelated to Ellison's later 1973 short story, "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs")

''The Whimper of Whipped Dogs'' (unfinished screenplay based on Ellison's 1974 short story of the same title as, but completely unrelated to, the ''Young Lawyers'' teleplay referenced above; three treatments of the opening sequence were published in the June 1988 issue of ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'' and later appeared in ''Harlan Ellison's Watching'' (1989))

''Soldier'', produced for ''The Outer Limits'' in 1964; published alongside the short story on which it was based in his 1967 collection ''From the Land of Fear''.

''Crazy as a Soup Sandwich'', produced for ''The Twilight Zone'' in 1989; published in his 1997 collection ''Slippage''.

See also ''The Starlost#1: Phoenix without Ashes'' (1975), the novelization by Edward Bryant of the teleplay for the pilot episode of ''The Starlost'', which includes a lengthy afterword by Ellison describing what happened during production of the series.

Anthologies edited

''Dangerous Visions'' (1967) (also issued as a three-volume paperback edition)

''Nightshade and Damnations: the finest stories of Gerald Kersh'' (1968)

''Again, Dangerous Visions'' (1972) (also issued as a two-volume paperback edition)

''Medea: Harlan's World'' (1985) (an experiment in collaborative science-fictional world-building, featuring contributions by Hal Clement, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin, Larry Niven, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon, and others)

Selected short stories

"A Boy and His Dog"

"Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W"

"The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World"

"The Deathbird"

"The Diagnosis of Dr. D'arqueAngel"

"The Dragon on the Bookshelf"

"From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet"

"Grail"

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" Made into CD-ROM Game, circa 1995-97

"Jeffty Is Five"

"Knox"

"The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World"

""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman"

"Shatterday" – adapted as an episode of the 1980s revival of ''The Twilight Zone''

"Shattered Like a Glass Goblin"

"Soldier": filmed as an ''Outer Limits'' episode. The film ''The Terminator'' had sufficient similarities to the story that later prints of the film acknowledge Ellison.

"Try a Dull Knife"

"The Whimper of Whipped Dogs"

"How's The Nightlife on Cissalda"

"Paladin of the Lost Hour"

Recent uncollected stories

Since the publication of the author's last collection of previously uncollected stories, ''Slippage'' (1997), Ellison has published the following works of fiction:

''Objects of Desire in the Mirror are Closer Than They Appear'' (1999) (''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' October/November issue)

''The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes'' (1999) (''Amazing Stories'' issue 600)

''From A to Z, In the Sarsaparilla Alphabet'' (2001) (''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' February issue)

''Incognita, Inc.'' (2001) (''Hemispheres, the Inflight Magazine of United Airlines'' January issue)

''Never Send to Know for Whom the Lettuce Wilts'' (2002) (''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' January issue)

''Goodbye to All That'' (2002) (''McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales'' anthology edited by Michael Chabon)

''Loose Cannon, or Rubber Duckies from Space'' (2004) (''Amazing Stories'' issue 603)

''Prologue to the Endeavor: Luck be a Lady Tonight'' (2006) (''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' September issue)

''How Interesting: A Tiny Man'' (2010) (''Realms of Fantasy'' February issue)

;Notes

''Objects...'' was later included in the 2001 revised and expanded edition of ''The Essential Ellison''.

''From A to Z...'' was later included in ''Deathbird Stories: Expanded Edition'' released in 2011 by Subterranean Press.

''The Toad Prince,...'' is a novelette which, according to the author's afterword, was originally written in the early 1990s.

''Incognita, Inc.'' was reprinted the same year, in ''Realms of Fantasy'' (August 2001). It was also reprinted in 2001 in ''The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection'' edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and most recently in 2007 in ''Summer Chills'' edited by Stephen Jones.

''Never Send to Know...'' is a heavily revised, expanded and retitled version of an Ellison story originally published in 1956. It was also included in the 2001 reprint collection ''Troublemakers''.

''Goodbye to All That'' was originally written in the mid-90s for the ''Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor'' comic series, but was not included at the time due to the series ceasing publication. It was finally incorporated into the series in March 2007 as part of ''Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor: Volume Two''.

''Loose Cannon'' is a 200 word piece of flash fiction accompanied by an 800 word introduction by Neil Gaiman as part of the magazine's series of 1,000 words inspired by a painting.

''Luck be a Lady Tonight'' is an article in which Ellison sets down the challenge of adapting an idea of his into a short story; an idea which Ellison himself was unable over the years to turn into a work of fiction. Three writers were ultimately commissioned by the magazine's editor and their stories appeared in the same issue alongside Ellison's essay of proposal.

''How Interesting: A Tiny Man'' was reprinted in 2010 in ''Unrepentant: A Celebration of the Writings of Harlan Ellison'' edited by Robert T. Garcia.

Graphic story adaptations

Several stories have been adapted and collected into comic book stories for Dark Horse Comics. They can be found in two volumes. Each issue of the comic included a new original story based on the cover.

New stories (partial list)

* "The Museum on Cyclops Avenue"

* "Chatting with Anubis"

Phoenix Without Ashes was published by IDW as a comic book.

Computer games

''I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream''

Audio recordings (selection)

On The Road With Ellison Volume 1 – released 1983, reissued 2001 on Deep Shag Records

The Voice From the Edge, Vol.1: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream – released 1999 on Fantastic Audio and Audible.com 2011

The Voice From the Edge, Vol.2: Midnight In the Sunken Cathedral – released 2001 on Fantastic Audio, and Audible.com 2011

On The Road With Ellison Volume 2 – released 2004 on Deep Shag Records

On The Road With Ellison Volume 3 – released 2007 on Deep Shag Records

The Voice From the Edge, Vol. 3: Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes – released 2009 on Blackstone Audio and Audible.com 2011

On The Road With Ellison Volume 4 – released 2010 on Deep Shag Records

On The Road With Ellison Volume 5 – released 2011 on Deep Shag Records

The Voice From the Edge, Vol. 4: The Deathbird & Other Stories – Audible.com 2011

The Voice From the Edge, Vol. 5: Shatterday & Other Stories – Audible.com 2011

Memoirs

On the May 30, 2008 broadcast of the PRI radio program Studio 360, Ellison announced that he had signed with a "major publisher" to produce his memoirs. The tentative title is ''Working Without A Net''. In the television show Babylon 5, for which Ellison worked as a creative consultant, in the year 2258 the fictional character Susan Ivanova is once seen reading, and laughing to, a book titled ''Working Without A Net'', written by Harlan Ellison (TKO).

Contemporary Publications

Currently the print-on-demand publisher Edgeworks Abbey/E-Reads publishes 32 titles of Ellison's, which are available through Barnes & Noble's online store, as well as the online stores of the publisher and also Amazon.

"I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream" was included in ''American Fantastic Tales'', volume II (from the 1940s to now), edited by Peter Straub and published by the prestigious Library of America in 2009. ''The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century'' edited by Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) included Ellison's "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs." In October 2010, a special collection was issued by MadCon, a convention in Wisconsin at which Ellison was the guest of honor. The hardcover book is entitled, ''Unrepentant: a celebration of the writings of Harlan Ellison'' (Garcia Publishing Services, 2010). In addition to including "How Interesting: A Tiny Man", Ellison's newest short story (previously published in "Realms of Fantasy" magazine), it also included "'Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktock Man", "Some Frightening Films of the Forties" (a never before reprinted essay), an illustrated bibliography of Ellison's fiction books by Tim Richmond, an article by Robert T. and Frank Garcia on Ellisons television work, an appreciation/essay by Dark Horse Comics publisher Michael Richardson, an article about Deep Shag's audio recordings of Ellison speaking engagements by Michael Reed, a 6-page B&W; gallery of covers by Leo and Diane Dillon, a two-page Neil Gaiman-drawn cartoon and an official biography. In March 2011, Subterranean Press released an expanded edition of ''Deathbird Stories'' featuring new introductory material, new afterwords and three additional stories (the never-before-collected "From A to Z, in the Sarsaparilla Alphabet", together with "Scartaris, June 28th", and "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore").

''Dreams with Sharp Teeth'' (Film)

On Thursday, April 19, 2007, ''Dreams with Sharp Teeth'', a film by the producers of Werner Herzog’s ''Grizzly Man'', received its first public screening at the Writers Guild Theatre in Los Angeles. This documentary, a profile of Ellison and his work, was released on DVD by New Video Group on May 26, 2009.

Awards

Ellison has won the Hugo Award eight and a half times; the Nebula Award four times, along with a Grandmaster Nebula Award (basically a lifetime achievement award); the Bram Stoker Award, presented by the Horror Writers Association, five times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996); the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice; the World Fantasy Award twice (the second time for Lifetime achievement); and the Georges Méliès fantasy film award twice.

As of 2011, Ellison is the only author to have won the Nebula Award three times for the short story. A fourth Nebula was awarded in the novella category.

He was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union. In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship. In 1998, he was awarded the "Defender of Liberty" award by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

In March 1998, the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit, Wisdom award. In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship.

Ellison was named 2002's winner of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal's "Distinguished Skeptic Award", in recognition of his contributions to science and critical thinking. Ellison was presented with the award at the Skeptics Convention in Burbank, California, June 22, 2002.

In December 2009, Ellison was nominated for a Grammy award in the category Best Spoken Word Album For Children for his reading of ''Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There'' for Blackstone Audio, Inc. This was his second Grammy nomination, the first coming in the late 1970s, for a self-produced reading (released via the Harlan Ellison Record Collection) of "Jeffty is Five."

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films (USA)

Golden Scroll (Best Writing – Career 1976)

Audio Publishers Association

''The Titanic Disaster Hearings: The Official Transcript of the 1912 Senatorial Investigation'' (Best "Multi-Voiced Presentation", 1999)

''City of Darkness'' (Best Solo Narration, 1999)

Best American Short Stories

''The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore'' (included in the 1993 anthology)

Bradbury award

The Bradbury Award was given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2000 to Harlan Ellison and Yuri Rasovsky for the radio series 2000X.

Bram Stoker Award

''The Essential Ellison'' (best collection, 1987)

''Harlan Ellison's Watching'' (best non-fiction, 1989 — tie)

''Mefisto in Onyx'' (best novella, 1993 — tie)

''Chatting With Anubis'' (best short story, 1995)

Lifetime Achievement Award, 1995

''I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream'' (best other media — audio, 1999)

Edgar Allan Poe Award

''The Whimper of Whipped Dogs'' (best short story, 1974)

''Soft Monkey'' (best short story, 1988)

Hugo Award

""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" (best short fiction, 1966)

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (best short story, 1968)

''The City on the Edge of Forever'' (best dramatic presentation, 1968)

''Dangerous Visions'' (special award, 1968)

"The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" (best short story, 1969)

''Again, Dangerous Visions'' (special award for excellence in anthologizing, 1972)

"The Deathbird" (best novelette, 1974)

"Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W" (best novelette, 1975)

''A Boy and His Dog'' (film – Best Dramatic Presentation, 1976. The Hugo was originally given to the producers, but after Ellison complained that as author of the original story on which L. Q. Jones's screenplay was based, he deserved to share in the award. But no extra statuette could be found, so he was given the base of one to mollify him, which he calls his "half Hugo.")

"Jeffty Is Five" (best short story, 1978)

"Paladin of the Lost Hour" (best novelette, 1986)

Locus Poll Award

''The Region Between'' (best short fiction, 1970)

''Basilisk'' (best short fiction, 1972)

''Again, Dangerous Visions'' (best anthology, 1972)

''The Deathbird'' (best short fiction, 1974)

''Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W'' (best novelette, 1975)

''Croatoan'' (best short story, 1976)

''Jeffty Is Five'' (best short story, 1978) (best short story of all time, 1999 online poll)

''Count the Clock That Tells the Time'' (best short story, 1979)

''Djinn, No Chaser'' (best novellette, 1983)

''Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed'' (best related non-fiction, 1985)

''Medea – Harlan's World|Medea: Harlan's World'' (best anthology, 1986)

''Paladin of the Lost Hour'' (best novelette, 1986)

''With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole'' (best short story, 1986)

''Angry Candy'' (best collection, 1989)

''The Function of Dream Sleep'' (best novellette, 1989)

''Eidolons'' (best short story, 1989)

''Mefisto in Onyx'' (best novella, 1994)

''Slippage'' (best collection, 1998)

Nebula Award

''"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman'' (best short story, 1965)

''A Boy and His Dog'' (best novella, 1969)

''Jeffty Is Five'' (best short story, 1977)

Grand Master Award (at Tempe, Arizona, May 6, 2006)

''How Interesting: A Tiny Man'' (best short story, tied with Kij Johnson/"Ponies" 2011)

Writers Guild of America

''Demon with a Glass Hand''/''The Outer Limits'' (Best Original Teleplay)

''The City on the Edge of Forever''/''Star Trek''(Best Original Teleplay)

''Paladin of the Lost Hour''/''The Twilight Zone'' (Best Anthology Episode/Single Program, 1987)

''Phoenix Without Ashes''/''The Starlost'' (Best Written Dramatic Episode, 1974)

Writers Guild of Canada

''The Human Operators''/''The Outer Limits'' (2000)

World Fantasy Award

''Angry Candy'' (Best Collection, 1988)

Lifetime Achievement Award, 1993

Additional reading

''California Sorcery'', edited by William F. Nolan and William Schafer

Parodies and pastiches of Ellison

Ellison is such a distinctive personality that many other science-fiction authors have inserted thinly-disguised parodies of him into their works, some good-natured, others hostile.

One of the more benevolent is the main character in a mystery novel ''Murder at the A.B.A.'' by Isaac Asimov. The novel's main character and narrator is an author named "Darius Just", a thinly-disguised parody of Ellison, who serves as an amateur sleuth to solve the murder of a fellow author at the convention. Asimov intended the name "Darius Just" as a pun on "Dry As Dust". Ellison objected to the depiction: Darius Just is tall, whereas Ellison is taller. Just reappears in the Black Widowers mystery short story "The Woman in the Bar", which is unrelated to the novel, and after Asimov's death in the pastiche "The Last Story" by Charles Ardai.

Robert Silverberg's 1955 novel, ''Revolt on Alpha C'', a retelling of the American Revolution set on a distant planet, features a character named "Harl Ellison," who is the first cadet (of a group that has been sent to restore order) to switch sides and join the revolutionaries.

Ben Bova's comic-SF novel ''The Starcrossed'' was inspired by Ellison's and Bova's experience on the Canada-produced miniseries ''The Starlost''. In Bova's novel, a new television show is produced to encourage people to buy newly-invented 3D televisions. The Ellison character is a famous writer named Ron Gabriel. Although Bova is a friend of Ellison's, and his portrayal of Gabriel is admiring and sympathetic, the novel is broad comedy, and should not be read as a true roman a clef. Ellison gave a non-fiction account of his ''Starlost'' experience in a lengthy essay titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto".

Mike Friedrich and artist Dick Dillin paid a bizarre homage in the May 1971 issue of the comic book ''Justice League of America''. In a hallucinatory story called "The Most Dangerous Dreams of All," the literary efforts of a flashy, insecure writer named Harlequin Ellis somehow become reality.

In the Ron Goulart novel ''Galaxy Jane'', a birdman character by the name of Harlan Grzyb (author of ''I Have No Perch But I Must Sing'' and editor of ''Dangerous Birdcages'') rages about the terrible things others have done to his script for the film ''Galaxy Jane''.

In ''The Dark Knight Returns'', Frank Miller featured Ellison by name as a television talking head. His only dialog elliptically anticipates a world where "[we'll] be eating our own babies for breakfast." Ellison and Miller are friends, the latter drawing the cover and writing the introduction for the stand-alone publication of ''Mefisto in Onyx''.

In a somewhat less sympathetic vein, Ellison serves as a partial basis for a composite character in Sharyn McCrumb's ''Bimbos of the Death Sun''. The novel is a satirical look at science fiction and fantasy fandom and conventions.

David Gerrold, in his 1980 Star Trek novel ''The Galactic Whirlpool'', makes mention of "Ellison's Star," a particularly unpredictable and "angry" White Dwarf star.

Yet another Ellison-character appears throughout a 1971 novel by Gerrold and Larry Niven, ''The Flying Sorcerers''. The pantheon of gods in this story are all named after various SF writers. Ellison becomes Elcin, "The small, but mighty god of thunder" who will "Rain lightning down upon the heads" of those who "deny the power of the gods".

In an episode of the animated television show ''Freakazoid!'' entitled "And Fanboy is His Name," Freakazoid offers Fanboy "his very own Harlan Ellison" (as a slow, slightly dischordant version of ''For He's A Jolly Good Fellow'' plays on the soundtrack) in an attempt to convince Fanboy to stop following him.

In the 1970s, artist and cartoonist Gordon Carleton wrote and drew a scripted slide show called "City on the Edge of Whatever," which was a spoof of "The City on the Edge of Forever". Occasionally performed at Star Trek conventions, it featured an irate writer named "Arlan Hellison" who screamed at his producers, "Art defilers! Script assassins!"

''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' poked fun at Ellison in the episode "Mitchell", identifying a short irritable–looking man being booked into a police station as the writer and expressing some satisfaction at that notion. (Tom Servo: "They've arrested Harlan Ellison!" Joel Robinson: "Good.")

In "Halvah," Clifford Meth describes an interaction between an Ellison-like character named Cord (for Cordwainer Bird) and a throng of annoying fans. Ellison and Meth are friends, and Ellison provided an afterword to Meth's book ''god's 15 minutes''.

Ellison's own self-parody

At Stephen King's request, Ellison provided a description of himself and his writing in Danse Macabre. "My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrater or critic with umbrage will say of my work, `He only wrote that to shock.' I smile and nod. Precisely."

References

Bibliography

Leigh Blackmore, ''Ellison/Dowling/Dann: A Bibliographic Checklist''. (Sydney:R'lyeh Texts, 1996).

Swigart, Leslie Kay. ''Harlan Ellison: A Bibliographical Checklist'' 2nd ed. Libra Aurore, 1981.

Documentary film

Erik Nelson (writer and director). ''Dreams with Sharp Teeth'' (made 2002-2007, released 2008). A documentary film about Ellison's life and work.

External links

Ellison Webderland Official website

Harlan Ellison Islets of Langerhans

The Ellison Bulletin Board Discussion forum

Radio Interview on Comic Zone

Darkhorse comics titles

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Disney (Harlan Ellison)

''2000X'' website

Harlan Ellison @ Deep Shag Records

Review of Dreams With Sharp Teeth documentary

Excerpt from Dreams With Sharp Teeth, Harlan Ellison On Getting Paid

The Onion A.V. Club Interview, Part One

The Onion A.V. Club Interview, Part Two

Essay on Ellison as Jewish Writer at Nextbook.org

Category:1934 births Category:American horror writers Category:American fantasy writers Category:American science fiction writers Category:Cthulhu Mythos writers Category:Edgar Award winners Category:Hugo Award winning authors Category:Jewish American writers Category:American literary critics Category:Living people Category:Nebula Award winning authors Category:Ohio State University alumni Category:Pacifica Radio Category:People from Cleveland, Ohio Category:People from Painesville, Ohio Category:Science fiction editors Category:Science fiction fans Category:SFWA Grand Masters Category:American comics writers Category:Worldcon Guests of Honor Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners Category:Writers from Ohio Category:Clarion Writers' Workshop

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