Skip links
Published on: Ev

February 1918

Soviet Union. Lenin, having outlined the Gulag system the previous October, now ordered an increase in the number of prisons and intensified the repression of crimes. The following May, he decreed that extortion would be punishable by at least 10 years in prison and an additional 10 years of hard labor, for a total of 20 years. Tsarist prison staff were also reinstated everywhere.