At the end of the 1950s, populations of the newly occupied territories of the East and intellectuals remained two categories particularly suspected of anti-Sovietism. Subjected to exhausting tasks like men, women, including many war widows condemned to heavy sentences for petty food pilfering, now represent a quarter of the zeks. Nearly 2 million detainees, many of them on the very edge of survival, are still crammed into the camps. Little by little, these appalling living conditions cause the economic profitability of the Gulag to drop. On March 5, 1953, after Stalin's death, a million releases were announced. In 1956, Khrushchev, exonerating himself from his responsibility, however undeniable, denounced the crimes of Stalinism, provoking an immense shock wave in the world.
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In 1918, only a few months after the October Revolution, the first concentration camps appeared. With the aim of getting rid of political adversaries and re-educating the so-called "asocial" elements through work, the new Bolshevik regime conducted its first large-scale experiment on the Solovki archipelago, very close to the Arctic Circle. Thousands of political and common law detainees, men and women, were deported there and subjected to forced labor. With the arrival of Stalin in power, slavery in these camps became a major economic resource. However, the death of thousands of zeks ("prisoners") will not worry the regime, which sees its population as an inexhaustible source of labor...
2019 • History
Glorified at the XVIIth Congress of the Communist Party, in 1934, Stalin launched major projects that would go down in history. The NKVD, which succeeded the GPU, multiplies the camps. The number of deportees passed the one million mark in 1935. A spectacular showcase for the great terror unleashed in 1937, the Moscow trials concealed the extent of the repression that blindly fell on all of Soviet society and anonymous people. In August 1939, after the signing of the German-Soviet pact, hundreds of thousands of Poles, Balts, Western Ukrainians and Moldavians joined some 2 million Soviet deportees in the Gulag camps. Conditions of detention deteriorated appallingly with the invasion of the USSR by the Wehrmacht in June 1941; and in 1945, despite the victory over Nazi Germany, the number of oppressed increased by tens of thousands of men, women and even children who often had no other fault than to have survived the Nazi occupation...
2019 • History
At the end of the 1950s, populations of the newly occupied territories of the East and intellectuals remained two categories particularly suspected of anti-Sovietism. Subjected to exhausting tasks like men, women, including many war widows condemned to heavy sentences for petty food pilfering, now represent a quarter of the zeks. Nearly 2 million detainees, many of them on the very edge of survival, are still crammed into the camps. Little by little, these appalling living conditions cause the economic profitability of the Gulag to drop. On March 5, 1953, after Stalin's death, a million releases were announced. In 1956, Khrushchev, exonerating himself from his responsibility, however undeniable, denounced the crimes of Stalinism, provoking an immense shock wave in the world.
2019 • History
15,000 years ago man and the wolf form a partnership that shapes the future of Mankind. With the help of man's new best friend we domesticate more animals, sowing the first seeds of farming and civilization.
9/12 • Mankind Decoded • 2013 • History
Over 60,000 years ago, the first modern humans—people physically identical to us today—left their African homeland and entered Europe, then a bleak and inhospitable continent in the grip of the Ice Age. But when they arrived, they were not alone: the stocky, powerfully built Neanderthals had already been living there for hundred of thousands of years. So what happened when the first modern humans encountered the Neanderthals? Did we make love or war?
2013 • History
The search for the tomb of the greatest warrior who ever lived is a 2000-year-old mystery. The film searches all over Egypt and beyond and discovers how his body has been used as a political tool throughout the ages. Drama and CGI bring Alexander back to life and as we follow the clues we finally may have solved the mystery.
Part 5 • Egypt Unwrapped • 2008 • History
In the city of Jerusalem, a man is crucified - Jesus of Nazareth. His death gives birth to a global religion. But Christianity may never have happened without the Roman Empire. A vast network of roads and shipping lanes, it allows goods and ideas to flow across three continents. Jesus’ message transforms Mankind. Today one in three people on the planet are Christians.
3/12 • Mankind: The Story of All of Us • 2012 • History
It's known as the Miracle of Dunkirk: in May 1940, approximately 340,000 Allied troops were trapped with their backs to the sea. Sitting ducks, the troops were subjected to an endless barrage of bombs and bullets as the Luftwaffe apparently bombed at will. The situation seemed hopeless. Then a fleet of ships appeared on the horizon, mostly sent by the Royal Navy but joined by smaller craft captained by plucky civilians. The soldiers were rescued from the beaches and taken safely back to Britain. They would later return to win the war. But behind the Miracle of Dunkirk there's another, hidden story. Soldiers and mariners, angry that they'd apparently been left undefended against the Luftwaffe, blamed the RAF. Historians have long viewed Dunkirk as the RAF's poorest hour. But now, recently released MoD files reveal that, far from being absent, the RAF were suffering massive losses supporting the evacuation.
Secret History • 2017 • History
Richard Miles explores the power and the paradox of the 'Greek Thing' - a blossoming in art, philosophy and science that went hand in hand with political discord, social injustice and endless war. He paints a fascinating picture of the internal and external pressures that fuelled this unique political and social experiment, one that would pioneer many of the political systems that we still live with today, from oligarchy to tyranny, from totalitarianism to democracy.
S1E3 • Ancient Worlds • 2010 • History