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This book offers a fundamental reinterpretation of the role of the Gulag—the Soviet Union's vast system of forced-labor camps, internal exile, and prisons—in Soviet society. Soviet authorities undoubtedly had the means to exterminate all the prisoners who passed through the Gulag, but unlike the Nazis they did not conceive of their concentration camps as instruments of genocide. This book argues that the Gulag must be understood primarily as a penal institution where prisoners were given one final chance to reintegrate into Soviet society. Millions whom authorities deemed “re-educated” through brutal forced labor were allowed to leave. Millions more who “failed” never got out alive. Drawing on newly opened archives in Russia and Kazakhstan as well as memoirs by actual prisoners, the book shows how the Gulag was integral to the Soviet goal of building a utopian socialist society. It takes readers into the Gulag itself, focusing on one outpost of the Gulag system in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan, a location that featured the full panoply of Soviet detention institutions. The book traces the Gulag experience from its beginnings after the 1917 Russian Revolution to its decline following the 1953 death of Stalin. It reveals how the Gulag defined the border between those who would re-enter Soviet society and those who would be excluded through death.

This book is an exposition of the standards of human rights, which are applicable to the right of freedom of movement and residence of people within states. Written from the standpoint of international law, the book identifies these standards and examines their application to various categories of people, including nationals, non-nationals, minorities, and indigenous groups. The primary motive for writing this book lies in the fact that the vast majority of people move and reside within states. People's ability to exercise civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights within states generally depends in large measure on their ability to move about and to choose a place of residence within states. Freedom of movement is therefore crucial to the protection and enjoyment of other rights. As a consequence, the protection of freedom of movement cannot be left exclusively to domestic legal systems because many legal systems form the basis for denying people the right of free movement. Yet the extent to which freedom of movement within states is protected by human rights under international law has not received the attention that its importance deserves. Particular problems arise from the ordinary regulation of freedom of movement, internal exile, the development of free movement zones for nationals and third country nationals in economic and political unions, the need to protect the movement of minorities and indigenous peoples, the movement and location of refugees within states, as well as the legality of derogation from freedom of movement during states of emergency.