Releases

This chapter describes the Gulag policy for releasing their “inferior workforce,” also known as the “ballast.” Camp officials referred to the process of discharging terminally or severely ill prisoners as “unloading” (razgruzka), and it involved many types of releases, including medical discharges and special amnesties. Just as Stalin selected German POWs for repatriation who were invalids, and whose labor could no longer be exploited in camps, he unloaded sick and emaciated Gulag prisoners. Terminally ill prisoners who had been fully exploited were callously discarded, and many died shortly after their release. Medical releases and amnesties of dying prisoners thus constituted a fundamental Gulag practice applied on a massive scale. It effectively kept official mortality rates low, and thus concealed the destructive nature of the Gulag.