CHANGES IN THE COMPOSITION OF GULAG PRISONERS AS A RESULT OF THE 1953 AMNESTY: A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTATION
The large-scale amnesty of 1953 marked the beginning of the reform of the Soviet Union’s camp system. As a result of a significant reduction in the number of prisoners and the closure of a number of large construction projects, the GULAG lost its status as the main construction department and was unable to restore its previous volumes of activity. The result of this was the collapse of the system. The amnesty revealed the internal contradictions of the system, its inability to change. The article analyzes the changes in the structure of the GULAG prisoners in 1953 based on archival materials. The focus is on the issues of the quantitative correlation of various categories of the special contingent (by sex, age, terms of conviction) before and after the amnesty. Archival materials make it possible to analyze the liberation process. Based on the analysis of the data of the statistical reporting of the GULAG, the author concludes that the unevenness of the amnesty caused an increase in the proportion of dangerous criminals and “political” prisoners who were practically not affected by the amnesty, which caused a series of conflicts and uprisings.