When did the first concentration camps actually emerge? And in which country? The first word we would associate with “concentration camps” is the word “fascist”. And, at once, we will recall SS-men. German shepherd dogs …
In fact, the German fascists merely were particularly eager and active students. But the concentration camps were founded by the order of Dzerzhinskiy in 1918 and in them were detained all those, who were against the Soviet power (well, let us better say those who might have been against the Soviet power according to the opinion of the Bolsheviks.
If we try to formulate this in our today’s language, the Bolsheviks were “unscrupulous” and “inordinate”, for which reason they, strictly speaking, gained the victory – early in the 20th century they were not yet accustomed to such a manner of conduct. No rules were existent to them. And there was only one instrument – violence. In some way one might say that the opponents of the Bolsheviks tried to play chess with them, but those simply pushed the pieces from the chessboard.
Having gained the victory by means of violence, the Bolsheviks, too, were only able to keep the power in their hands by force. And this is why everybody considered to represent any kind of danger was – executed or put into a concentrationcamp.
During the first time the concentration camps merely served as isolating prisons. It is true that they made use of forced labor, but only on a rather small scale, and it did not play any important role for the economy of the country, either. But pretty soon some people from the government circles “with brains” appeared on the scene, who considered how to kill two birds with one stone – to isolate the “enemies of the people”, at the same obtain workers practically free of charge and, besides, fundamentally frighten all the remaining people, who stayed at liberty. The corresponding model was tested at the White Sea Canal. The method was proved successful. And camps started to shoot up like mushrooms at places, where communism had planned large construction projects. The idea was quite simple. Just to give an example: they had found deposits of copper and nickel on the Taymyr peninsula. It would have been very expensive to send workers and their families to the Polar circle, provide the necessary infrastructure (hospitals, schools, shops) and pay the usual high “Polar wages” (bonus for those working in Polar regions under extreme conditions; translator’s note)! But the idea of erecting a complete Norilsk Combine by means of camp prisoners – this would allow them to get off cheaply! Imagine that about one hundred prisoners fit into one barracks, which was equipped with all conveniences – two meters of plank beds. And they were fed with watery soup. They did not need to be paid any wages at all – the costs were limited to the purchase of barbed wire and the payment of the guards’ salaries.
In the 1930s and 1940s, and even later, the people could not understand “WHY” they were arrested – but the question has to be asked in a different way: “WHAT were they arrested FOR”? Because they started to practise slavery in their own country. For we are not only talking about “political prisoners”, but also of the criminals, as the existing criminal jurisdiction was also an extremely cruel one at that time. How much worth is an ucase (decree; transl. Note) of the 7th of August 1932 based on which people, who had merely picked up three tiny ears from a kolkhoz-owned field, were given a long prison sentence? Ivan Ivanovich Yegorov, a former political prisoner and later a member of the “Memorial” organization, who already deceased, unfortunately, once told us about a case, which remained engraved in his mind for a very long time: a girl was walking along the street, she was thirsty and so much wanted to drink. Near the hydrant there was a canteen. The girl went in, tokk a glass from the table, went over to the hydrant, drank some water and brought the glass back to where she had taken it from. She was arrested on the spot and was given two years for having stolen state property. She was a very congenial girl, who, during her stay in the camp, was soon passed on “from one hand to the other”. After a couple of months she was unable to bear this kind of life any longer – she hang herself.
Nobody was invulnerable to all this – neither hobos, nor members of the Central Committee.
Today you still excellently dined in the Kremlin, tomorrow they will put you on a prisoner’s ration; today you are signing sentences, tomorrow you will be sentenced yourself. At no time, in no country on the world, they ever established such a slave-owning system in this way. Slaves were always picked out from among the prisoners of war, those who had lost the wars, but only the Bolsheviks hit upon the idea of leading their own fellow citizens into slavery. Thus, they laid the foundation for the whole USSR economy. The NKVD was the biggest Ministry of Industry – this is what you should bring to your minds!
The system was a very simple one, nothing could be easier. The camps that had been organized near the big construction sites soon made the experience that they lacked workers. The labor front had become larger, while the prisoners died away from malnutrition and heavy labor that outreached their strength. The camps put forward their estimated demand for workers for the coming year; these demands were collected in the Center (the Capital of Moscow; transl. Note) and it became evident that one had to arrest, let us say – 5000 people, in order to meet these requirements. This number was split up on the different regions and republics in proportion to the population density, and there they had already issued detailed plans and “given instructions” to the administrative districts. Upon nonperformance of these made up plans the missing number of workers could easily be recruited from among the prisoners, and upon fulfillment of the plan a higher grade or titel, as well as rewards were in a store. For that reason the Chekists made every effort to tidy everything up – without any exception. A.I. Solzhenitsyn writes about the remarkable story of a deaf-mute, who was put in prison for heaving spread anti-Soviet propaganda: for some reason or other he had drunk vodka in the company of some other people and then gave to understand by some gestures that the vodka was fine, but just a bite to eat was missing here. Aha! It was his intention to make clear that they had nothing to eat in Soviet Russia?!
The prisoners were usually exploited for heavy labor and tasks which did not need any skill. But early in the 1940s they started organizing the so-called “sharashki” – special prisons for scholars and scientists, to have them construct weapons, project factories and develop technologies. Especially for these “sharashki” they traced out the required scientists, fabricated a false charge on them and then sent them away to the “carefully chosen place of destination”.
At the beginning of the lecture I said that the German fascists were conscientious and careful students. And this is by no means a metaphorical expression but a fact: in the 1930s representatives of the German criminal organs came to our country for training purposes; they did some practical training in the camps, learned about the different methods of mass reprisals and , let us call it this way, experienced how to “root out the population of entire small towns”, which is not an easy task to fulfil – there are lots of technical peculiarities; and the Germans also learned from ours, how to make the victims undress before their execution, until they stood there without a stitch on; and they also practised hard how to burn up peaceful inhabitants in granaries and store-houses during the suppression of the peasants’ revolts in the USSR. Since we are comparing the two regimes anyway, it is small wonder that the German regime was even softer, if one may use this expression for a men-eating government, which practised the extermination of entire peoples. But as soon as the Gestapo was convinced that someone was not an enemy of the people, they would usually release him – while in the USSR even the most fanatic devotion and loyalty did not guarantee any rescue or deliverance ata all. Forced labor was less common in the German camps, strictly speaking – they mainyl served as solitary confinement with restricted outside contracts.
It is now time, however, to proceed from the German camps and the GULAG in general to the camps of the Krasnoyarsk region.
Which camps numbered among the Krasnoyarsk? The region of Krasnoyarsk came into being in the year 1934, but camps had already existed on this territory at earlier times. Kharkassia also belonged to the Krasnoyarsk region for a long time, and in this area there were also quite a lot of camps. Well, let us agree to talk about those camps, which existed on the territories belonging to the Krasnoyarsk region from 1934 till the end of the 1980s.
First of all there was the SIBULON camp (Siberian Administration of Special-Purpose Camps), afterwards the Siblag, later the Siberian ITL (corrective labor camp; transl. Note). Taking into consideration all reorganizations, renamings and subdivisions it existed from the autumn of 1929 until January 1960. The people there were occupied with farming, livestock breeding, gold production and road construction. Thus, the Nifantevsk highway in the district of Turukhansk, Krasnoyarsk region, was built by prisoners of this camp.
Apart from this there were two Sibulon zones (sub sectors) situated on the left banks of the river Yenisey, in the vicinity of the villages of Yartsevo, Krivlyak, Fomka, ?), but also on the left tributary of the Yenisey, the river Kas (Sherchanka). Maybe this was a camp sector or even two. This camp was then called the “Turukhansk camp”, since Yartsevo belonged to the district of Turukhansk (today district of Yeniseysk). It would be more correct to call these camps “Yartsevsk camps”.
There were lumbering zones with 500-1000 prisoners each. Evidently, there were not more than 10 of these zones. In accordance with documents kept in the archives they also used to pursue road construction in these parts of the SIBULON / Siblag.
“Patriarchal” customs prevailed in the Yartsevsk camps. The prisoners who had “done something wrong” were “presented to the gnats”, i.e. they were tied to a tree, where they had to keep standing, until gnats and midges had sucked out all their blood. About this we can also read in the camp report given by Yekaterina Yosifovna Alexandrova – that “the prisoners were exposed to the gnats in summer and during the winter, upon severe, crisp frost, were doused with water”. In this camp they also used to practise the following torture: they tied the prisoner to a long board and let him down into the water. After a certain time they pulled the board up, but immediately lowered it again, without giving the prisoner the slightest chance to catch breath.
The camps were closed down around 1940. The small number of survivers (about 200) was transferred to Krasnoyarsk.
As from the middle of the 1940s in these places, particularly on the river Kas, new lumbering camps appeared (Gorodok and others). We have knowledge of the fact that in these camps the old Soviet habit of “exposing prisoners to the gnats” came to life again. We do not know, if this “second generation of Yartsevsk camps” was attached to the Siblag or possibly to the Construction Project 503 (Yenisey railroad camp) or whether they were zones of local (regional) subordination.
Founded on the 25.06.1935, closed down on the 22.08.1956. The camp was organized for the construction and exploitation of the Norilsk copper and nickel deposits (as well as the Taymyr-Biryulinsk mica deposits). From the geographical point of view the NorilLag did not only comprise Norilsk with Dudinka and Kayerkan: it also included the 8th camp sector in Krasnoyarsk, the camp in Podtyosovo as well as the farming camps (subsidiaries) in Kureyka, Atamanovo near Krasnoyarsk and further to the south up to Shushenskoye. The point is that the NorilLag, as well as other camps, was something like “a thing within itself”, i.e. it supplied itself with foodstuffs and other necessary materials to a considerable degree.
The NorilLag (Norilsk corrective labour camp) was a camp for the setting up of an industry. It came into being in 1935 and was meant for the purpose of extracting non-ferrous metals, mainly copper and nickel. By forced labour the prisoners of the NorilLag set up in the tundra of the Taymyr peninsula, above the artic circle, the town of Norilsk with its mining and non-ferrous smelting combine, the river and seaport in Dudinka (at he lower reaches of the Yenisey), the railroad line from Dudinka to Norilsk, the pits of Kayerkan and a lot more.
The first small transport of prisoners was driven to where we find the town today in 1935. It came from Leningrad. From Dudinka they were forced to walk on foot through the swampy tundra.
Starting with the year 1936, one transport of prisoners after the other came to the NorilLag, partly from prisons, partly from other camps, from everywhere in the USSR. In September 1938 transports with many thousands of prisoners were sent there from the prisons in Krasnoyarsk and Yeniseysk. They usually went up to Krasnoyarsk by train and from there by barges down the river Yenisey. Many prisoners perished on the way; they were buried ashore, when the barges moored there for a short time. It sometimes happened that these caravans suffered shipwreck. V.P. Astafyev told about how a barge with prisoners was smashed to pieces in Dudinka during a storm in 1939, how the people tried everything possible to save themselves by getting ashore and how the guards of the patrol station fired on them.
We also know about averages of barges, which occurred in the Kasachinsk rapids, when the people were also unable to make their escape, since the escorts did not allow them to get out of the water.
In June and August 1939 a transport of prisoners arrived from the so-called “permanent” prisoners: from Orel, Elets, Kustanay, the Solovkov Islands, whereby the prisoners from the Solovkov Islands were transported via the Arctic Ocean, Barents Sea and Kara Sea.
In the autumn of 1941 “interned” officers from the Lithuanian, Lett and Estonian armies were deported from the YukhnovLag (today region of Kaluga) to the NorilLag. Each of them served his sentence without knowing his section or term of confinement. Only later, in the NorilLag, they were pronounced their “final” terms of 5 to 10 years by a Special Board – and many of them were even sentenced posthumously – after their death. Well, such were the rules and principles in our countrx – first of all put someone in prison and later fabricate a charge for him.
More and more prisoner transports reached the NorilLag until 1953/1954.
Early in the 1950s the NorilLag consisted of about 30 camp sections. The camp shut down in 1956, when the majority of its inmates was released.
The consciousness of the public proceeds from too high a number of prisoners who passed through the Norilsk camps, namely more than one million. But this is not the case: they were not more than half-a-million, more likely four-hundred thousand,including non-political prisoners (many of which had not done anything wrong at all), as well as true criminals. The number of political prisoners, in all probability, did not exceed three-hundred thousand (including those who were imprisonned in the GorLag).
Itseems that this is not a very great number. But imagine, how it would be, if all these 300.000 people were standing close together. 300.000 people represent one third of the today’s population of Krasnoyarsk. It would be even better to imaging only one of them – and you will find it no less. Oksana Melnik, who served her sentence in Kolyma and earlier in the DubrovLag, reported, for example, that the unmates of the women’s camp received two pitches of water every day: and now you can think about how to use it – drink or wash. Well, sometimes it is sufficient just to give a sole example to make people shudder, although there happened things even worse than that.
The GorLag (“Special type 2”, i.e. “Special Camp No. 2”) was seperated from the NorilLag in 1948; it was given a new camp structure in connection with the organization of a completely new type of systems, the so-called “special camps”, which were practically meant for the imprisonment of political prisoners.
In order to distinguish the inmates of „special camps“ from eachother, they introduced a numbering system (in case of the GorLag it consisted of one letter and three cyphers). These numbers were sewn to the outer garments (in the GorLag on the chest, back and sleeves) and the caps. The numbers completely replaced the prisoners’ first and family names. The inmates were called by their numbers – an utterly insulting procedure. This very Oksana Melnik, who was already mentioned earlier, told us a rather symbol-bearing story: when the prisoners received the permission to remove their numbers, they immediately pulled them off. However, black squares remained on the quilted jackets, because the fabric had bleached in the course of time, except in the places where the numbers had been sewn on.
Initially the GorLag consisted of six forced labor camp sectors (among them one for women). They were all situated in Norilsk. A considerable number of prisoners from the NorilLag was transferred there. From this very moment they became part of the GorLag, but their names were taken off the registration lists of the NorilLag as „deceased“.
Nevertheless, in spite of the many years’ existence of the GorLag, thousands of political inmates remained prisoners of the NorilLag camp sectors. What is more – early on the 1950s many prisoners, mainly women, were transferred from the GorLag to the NorilLag.
Moreover, a considerable number of political inmates was obviously kept in the zones of the NorilLag, although they were registered as prisoners of the GorLag.
Formally, the GorLag was directly under the subordination of the GULag (Main Camp Administration; translator’s note)., but ist chief was the deputee chief of the NorilLag at the same time.
In this very GorLag a big camp strike was carried out in 1953, the so-called Norilsk revolt, when the prisoners had the whole territory of the living zones under their control and did not only present a number of demands and requests to the camp authorities, but also to the supreme rulers of the USSR. In spite of the subsequent suppression of the revolt, this strike had violently shaken the camp system to its very foundations, the more since a general strike was carried out in Vorkuta just at the same time. After the Kengirsk revolt in 1954 (on the territory of the StepLag) all these events led to the complete abolishment of the „special camp“ system.
In 1954 the entire GorLag lost ist separate camp structure (it was practically abolished together with the remaining special camps), and „flew back“ into the NorilLag camp organization, i.e. it became part of the NorilLag again.
The KrasLag (Krasnoyarsk corrective labor camp, which must not be mistaken for the KrasLag of the Yeniseystroy) was a typical lumbering camp organized early in 1938, i.e. at the same time as analogous camps, such as the UnzhLag, ViatLag, UsolLag or SewuralLag).
The administration of the KrasLag was in Kansk, but in 1946 (practically in 1948) it was transferred to Reschoty station (to the settlement of Niznyaya Poyma), where still nowadays exists an administration unit under the postbox address of Y-235.
From the territorial point of view the forced labor camp sub-sectors were scattered over several districts in the south-eastern part of the Krasnoyarsk region.
Like in all the other lumbering camps, the sub-sectors of the KrasLag were not very big: they were meant for 600-800, hardly ever for more than 1000 inmates. And like in all the other lumbering camps the prisoners were snatched away by hunger, pelagra and dysentery in the years 1938-1939 and 1941-1945. During these periods the average mortality rate reached about 7-8%.
The first prisoner transports to the KrasLag came from prisons of the Primore region, from Khabarovsk, Chita and the Ukraine (from the Donbas, from Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kiev and probably from the Crimea, too) and then from prisons in Kazakhstan (partly from Alma-Ata and Semipalatinsk). Later, in 1939 and 1940 prisoner transports from Leningrad and Middle Russia reached the KrasLag. Most of the arriving prisoners were political prisoners.
In the summer of 1941 a transport of several thousands of prisoners, consisting of Lithuanian citizens, was deported to the KrasLag, mainly people who had been arrested between the 13th and 19th of June 1941. Many of them died in 1941-1942. Only late in 1942, early in 1943 they were „assigned“ their terms of confinement by a Special Board; this is, why so many Lithuanian citizens were only sentenced after their death. Most of them were condemned to 5 to 10 years, but some were even sentenced to „capital punishment“ and executed in the prison in Kansk.
In January 1942 they chased away several thousands of Volga-Germans to the KrasLag; they all came from among those, who had already been deported away to the Krasnoyarsk region. Of course, this was carried out without any sentence, without any section or defined term of confinement. They called this „Labor Army“. The Germans were put into separate zones, so-called „detachments“. There were the same barbed-wire fences, the same watch towers, the same escorts, barracks, food rations and norms – as well as the same wide-spread pelagra and the same dystrophy. On the other hand party and Comsomol organizations were actively operating in these Labor Army“ zones – although the prisoners themselves did not have the right of admission and membership. The Germans were released from the KrasLag in 1946, and were, of course, sent back into internal exile.
During the second half of the 1940s prisoner transports from Lvov and other West-Ukrainian prisons arrived at the KrasLag, among them large women’s transports, as well as floods of prisoners from Minsk and Orsha. Most of them were political prisoners, as well.
In 1949-1950 lots of political prisoners from the KrasLag were sent to „special camps“: to the PeschanLag and the StepLag (Kazakhstan). But still after this action, more and more streams of political prisoners came to the KrasLag. Even in 1956 political inmates remained there (but probably only a few). Towards the year 1950 more than 100.000 prisoners had gone through the KrasLag. Obviously, not less than half of them had been registered as „politicals“.
The Yeniseystroy was not just a mere camp (corrective labor camp), but a real main administration of the GULag, similar to the Dalstroy.
The main administration of the „Yeniseystroy“ existed from 1949 to 1953. Its headquarters were in Krasnoyarsk. Ist chief was Major General Panyukov.
Formally, 10 camps (corrective labor camps) belonged to the main administration. However, they were organized at different times, but, in fact, only few of them were in operation: the Tayozhniy camp (in the district of Kansk), the Tuimskiy camp (in Khakassia) and the Krasnoyarsk camp (also known as the „KrasLag of the Yeniseystroy“), which were joined to the „DC“ camp complex in 1951, as well as 2-3 smaller ones.
The TayozhLag and the TuimLag were connected to mines. In Krasnoyarsk the prisoners of the Yeniseystroy built the „Sibstal“ (Siberian steal works) – and, apparently, an uranium factory.
A so-called „sharashka“ (special prison) belonged to the Yenisoy, as well. It was called the OTB-1 (Special Technology Office No. 1; translator’s note), which was situated in Krasnoyarsk and projected objects planned by and for the Yeniseystroy. In this OTB-1 were detained university graduates and doctors of science. The place where the „sharashka“ stood is well known to you. Paradoxically, it is the same place, where we today find thr Faculty of Law of the Krasnoyarsk State University – at Mayerchak Street No. 6. And the neighbouring Siberian Scientific Research Institute of non-ferrous Metals also emerged from this very „sharashka“.
The YeniseyLag (abbreviation YenLag) must neither be mistaken for the YonLag (or IonLag, in the region of Murmansk), nor for the Yenisey-ZheldorLag (the Yenisey camp for the cosntruction of railroads; translator’s note), also known under the term of Construction Project 503, nor the Yeniseystroy.
Apart from this, we also have to distinguish all three YeniseyLags from eachother.
The “first” YeniseyLag: in the 1930s the term of “YeniseyLag” characterized the whole camp system of local subordination. Later, as from 1935, this was the UITLK – the UNKVD Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies (UNKVD = provincial administration of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs; translator’s note).
The “second” YeniseyLag: in 1940 the YeniseyLag was separated from the UNKVD UITLK, received its own camp structure and was then under local and central (GULPS) subordination
(GULPS = Main Administration of Industrial Construction). This YeniseyLag built factories:
the factory for technical alcohols and the wood-processing factory in Krasnoyarsk and Abakan (Khakassia), the Kansk cellulose works, which was transferred there from the KrasLag in 1941, as well as the Krasnoyarsk non-ferrous smelting works (Factory No. 169).
The number of prisoners in this camp reached up to 12000, but the political prisoners probably did not represent the majority.
In 1941 the YeniseyLag was dissolved as being a camp with an independent camp structure, but its name was obviously used again, as previously in the 1930s, to characterize the camp system of local subordination.
The “third” YeniseyLag: from 1947 to 1953 the YeniseyLag of the Special Main Directorate for non-ferrous Metallurge was in operation. Its camp administration was (as in the previous case) situated in Krasnoyarsk, but the camp itself, i.e. the camp zone, was more or less some kind of an appendage to the “Yeniseyzoloto” gold trust, covering almost the entire North-Yenisey District, north-east of Yeniseysk.
The central camp zone was situated in the settlement of Sovrudnik (district center, today North Yeniseysk), not far from a gold mine; the remaining zones were scattered all over the district. They supplied the gold mine with mine timber. The separate forced labor camp sub-sector of Teya served as a transshipment point between Yeniseysk and Sovrudnik (a track only passable in winter).
In Krasnoyarsk there obviously were no further separated forced labor camp sub-sectors of the YeniseyLag, apart from the Brickworks No. 4 (upstream from the mouth of the Bazaikha river).
In all probability 10000 prisoners at the most passed through this camp. The political inmate among them presumably made up 10-20%.
This camp was organized in 1949 and closed down in the summer of 1952. It was a camp for the construction of the railroad line Zalekhard – Igarka. Its administration was in the settlement of Yermakovo.
It was one of the Stalinist “Projects of the Century”, the eccentric idea to build a railroad line through the tundra, although this track section was covered and soaked through, in the true sense of the word, by dead bodies – perished prisoners, who had not been able to beat the hard forced labor any longer and had broken down at the end of their tether. Many of them were buried directly beside the embankment. On this track they practised the following routine as an incentice to work: in the place, the prisoners should have reached (according to the plan) at the end of the day, they placed a table with food. In case the prisoners had succeeded to lay the rails “to the table”, they were allowed to eat. If not, they were forced to return to their barracks and were kept starving till the next day. Konstantin Khodzevich reports that once, during the fall, they had been unable to provide the camp with foodstuffs (this could only be done, while the rivers were navigable), so that the inmates were put on reduced rations throughout the whole winter, which yet seemed like a feast compared to a Leningrad daily food ration at that time. The result of this was that only a few prisoners stayed alive. However, when the river became navigable again, they already transported to the spot another lot of prisoner – and the construction project could be continued.
Even after Stalin’s death the system of forced labor did not come to an end. Till its very last days the economy of the USSR was built to a high extent on the foundations of the work of prisoners. In stead of “politicals” they now simply took “non-politicals". For a crime, for which they would usually impose a fine in other countries, they used to condemn the guilty person to a several years’ camp detention. And the system reproduced itself, because the camp effects on the inmate like a hard school. He becomes unable to adapt himself at liberty, soon finds himself in a camp again, for the second, third, … time. At present a market is developing, production circumstances are in a process of transformation and the colonies do not complain about labor shortage anymore, but , on the contrary, about a surplus of manpower. The prisoners, who previously contributed an extra profit to the government are now becoming a cost factor themselves. For some reason or other the criminal law also became more lenient – probably because of this economic inappropriateness.
Another form of forced labor – the army. Some years ago, we went on an expedition beyond the Polar circle – through the tundra. Suddenly we came across a military base – a unit of soldiers, a couple of officers, radar installations, antennas … The officers welcomed us in a friendly manner and even showed us around. We asked: this place is probably subject to utmost secrecy, isn’t it? Why should it be secret, the officers laughed, this is quite a common transformer station. But what are you doing here, for heaven’s sake, we continued to ask. Well, the answer is easy, the officers said. Soldiers receive a pay of 7 Rubels per month (this was in 1990), but if you appoint to this post over here someone from the polar region, you have to pay him many hundreds of Rubels; apart from this you have to provide an infrastructure. And so they had built some barracks, some extra rooms for the officers, a bath house – and there you have your infrastructure. That’s the way it is. Just the same as this GULag, only in a different appearance.
When will the GULag system have entirely disappeared – both in its former and today’s appearance? When there is no more totalitarism and people are no more jailed merely for their conviction, for having a different opinion, but put to prison only for having committed real crimes. When the economy of the country finally stops to depend on the slave labor of prisoners. It depends on you, whether this will come true one day.