gu^.lag

The System of Prison, Labor and Concentration Camps Spread across the Soviet Union. Officially most were "corrective labor colonies." Rooted in the exile in Siberia system of the tsarist period, the GULAG was organized by the Communist government in 1918 and vastly expanded under Stalin. GULAG is a Russian acronym for a department of the secret police, "chief administration of corrective labor camps."
www.pbs.org/redfiles/prop/inv/prop_inv_voc.htm

A system of penal institutions in the Soviet Union est'd after the 1917 Russian Revolution . The name comes from the Russian acronym for the Chief Administration for Corrective Labour Camps. Under Stalin an estimated 10 million were sentenced to forced labour in the camps in the period between 1934 and 1947 alone. These prisoners were suspected of crimes against the State (anything from political dissidence to failure to co-operate with Stalin's collective programme). Millions of inmates died from cold, disease, malnutrition and summary executions.
www.embassy.org.nz/encycl/g4encyc.htm

a Russian prison camp for political prisoners
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.1

Gulag (from the Russian ÃÓËÀÃ: Ãëàâíîå Óïðàâëåíèå Èñïðàâèòåëüíî— Òðóäîâûõ Ëàãåðåé, "Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey", "The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag