The Gulag was a vast system of forced labor camps that existed in the former Soviet Union from the early 1930s until the mid-1950s. Synonyms for the word "The Gulag" can include the Soviet prison system, the labor camps, the Soviet forced labor system, the Soviet concentration camps, the Soviet penal system, and the Soviet work camps. These terms describe the same brutal and oppressive system that took the lives of millions of people, including Soviet citizens, political dissidents, and prisoners of war. Each of these synonyms captures a different aspect of the terror that was the Gulag, and highlights the sheer scale and inhumanity of the Soviet system of repression.