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In times when the Soviet Union still existed, the earlier katorga system of penal labor camps was replaced by a new one that was controlled by the GULAG state agency.
According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, with a further seven to eight million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union ( including entire nationalities in several cases ).
516, 841 prisoners died in camps from 1941 to 1943 due to food shortages caused by World War II.
At other periods, mortality was comparatively lower.
The size, scope, and scale of the GULAG slave labor camp remains a subject of much research and debate.
For example, Australian professor Stephen Wheatcroft argues that these penal camps were neither as large nor as deadly as is often claimed.
Many Gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of north-eastern Siberia.
The best known clusters are Sevvostlag ( The North-East Camps ) along Kolyma river and Norillag near Norilsk, where 69, 000 prisoners were kept in 1952.
Major industrial cities of Northern Siberia, such as Norilsk and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.

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