2.nounThe system of all Soviet prison and/or labor camps in use during the Stalinist period."One important difference between the GULAG system and the Nazi concentration camps was that a person sentenced to five years of hard labor in a Soviet labor camp could expect, assuming he or she survived, to be released at the end of the sentence. [Gulag: Soviet Prison Camps and Their Legacy; By David Hosford, Pamela Kachurin and Thomas Lamont. National Resource Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, Harvard University]"