The Gulag was a system of labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word Gulag originally referred only to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era. The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Glávnoye upravléniye ispravítel'no-trudovýkh lageréy" (Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й or "Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps"), but the full official name of the agency changed several times.
