"This book documents the often horrific stories of the Gulag fleet and its passengers and reveals the unwitting role of the U. S. government in the operation. U.S. shipyards built most of the Gulag fleet and later overhauled many ships free of charge. Bollinger details this tragic saga of forced relocation using firsthand testimony from those involved in the operation and materials from both American and Russian archives. His examination of how much Washington knew about the use of American ships to transport slave laborers adds valuable information to the record of the Soviet Union under Stalin."--BOOK JACKET.

From the personal accounts of those devoured by the great darkness of Stalin's Russia, the Explaining History series details the explosive growth of Stalin's vast industrial revolution, and the explosive growth of his terror and the slave camps that held his victims.The lives of workers, peasants, Poles and Jews, intellectuals and secret policemen are explained here in an accessible and straight forward way, as is the seemingly impenetrable thinking of Joseph Stalin.

The Gulag at War reveals for the first time official documents kept in the archives of the Soviet forced labour system. An assessment of previous western and Russian studies of the Gulag is followed by a description of its origins. The bulk of the book then concentrates on the labour camps during the Second World War years. New information is revealed regarding prisoner numbers, living conditions, the organisation of forced labour, economic production, and rebellion in the camps.