A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in forced labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons. Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators.
In the Soviet Union, a synonym, Labor colony was also in use; more exactly, "Corrective labor colony", (исправительно-трудовая колония, ИТК).
Notable labor camps
Imperial Russia operated a system of remote Siberian forced labor camps as part of its regular judicial system, called katorga. Though conditions were difficult, they were mild compared to those of later Soviet camps.
The Soviet government took over the already extensive katorga system and expanded it immensely, eventually organizing the Gulag to run the camps. These camps were notorious for their extremely rough conditions; new prisoner death rate was as high as 80% at some camps. During and after the Great Purges, the Gulag camps housed millions of prisoners. Stalin used them both as a source of cheap labor, and as indirect extermination camps.
Nazis operated many extremely brutal concentration camps, which provided free forced labor for industrial and other jobs during World War II. There were several categories of Arbeitslager in Nazi system, for different categories of inmates.
The Khmer Rouge operated labor camps in Cambodia following their seizure of power, for the "rehabilitation" of the (loosely defined) bourgeois classes.
A laborcamp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in penal labor.
The laborcamp was a way for the Soviet Union to stop the population from rebelling, and it was a tool of fear.
In Communist Romania, labour camps were operated for projects such as the building of the Danube-Black Sea Canal and the desiccation of the Great Brăila Island, on which enemies of the regime were "re-educated" by forced labour.
The term "corrective laborcamp" was suggested for official use by the politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union session of July 27, 1929, as a replacement of the term concentration camp, commonly used until that time.
It was not uncommon for the survivors of Nazicamps to be transported directly to the Soviet labour camps.
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.
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