At Dawn They Came: Soviet Terror and Repression 1917 - 1953

The Bolshevik coup d’état in 1917 ushered in a system of brutal repression. Millions suffered imprisonment or deportation. A network of thousands of prisons, labour camps, and exile settlements, collectively known as the Gulag, was established over the vast reaches of the Soviet Union.

Life in the Gulag

Conditions in the camps were harsh, with prisoners subjected to:

• Brutal physical and psychological abuse
• Extreme cold
• Near-starvation

Over two and a half million never returned home, dying in exile or captivity.

Mass Executions

Hundreds of thousands more were shot, their bodies now lying under the earth in mass graves all over the former Soviet Union and in the surrounding nations it occupied. By the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, at least twenty million had perished.

A Crime Against Humanity

Collectively, the events of this period constitute one of the greatest crimes against humanity of the 20th Century. This is the story of how it unfolded.