ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Forced labor in the Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, some people were made to work without being paid or having any choice in what they did. This is called forced labor.

Imagine you have a toy that you don't really want to play with, but your mom tells you that you have to play with it for hours every day. You don't get any reward for doing it, and you don't have a choice. That's kind of like forced labor.

In the Soviet Union, some people were forced to work in mines, factories, construction sites, and other places. They didn't get to choose where they worked or what they did, and they didn't get paid like normal workers. They were treated like slaves.

The Soviet government used forced labor to build things like roads, bridges, and factories. They also used it to extract resources like coal and gold. The people who were forced to do this work were usually prisoners, political dissidents, or people from minority groups.

Some of the most notorious examples of forced labor in the Soviet Union include the Gulag system and the so-called "Stalin's Fist". The Gulag was a network of labor camps where millions of people were sent to work in the harshest conditions imaginable. Stalin's Fist was a program that sent people to work in remote places like Siberia, where they were forced to build infrastructure and extract resources.

Forced labor in the Soviet Union was a terrible thing. People were treated like animals, they were abused, and they were not given any choices. It's important to learn about it so that we can understand how people suffered during that time, and so that we can make sure it never happens again.