A anistia esvaziou quase metade dos campos em poucos meses e foi recebida com alarme pela população das cidades, por causa da libertação em massa de presos comuns. Para os políticos, a mudança só viria com as revisões de processos de 1954 em diante.
Decree “On the Amnesty”
Three weeks after Stalin’s death, the decree proposed by Lavrentiy Beria freed about 1.2 million prisoners serving up to five years. Political convicts under Article 58 were left out.
See also
Whole library
MG-00011919Official documentDecree on forced labour camps
The decree ordering forced labour camps in every provincial capital, run by the NKVD: the first legal milestone of the network that became the Gulag in the 1930s.
MG-00021937Official documentNKVD Operational Order No. 00447
The order that opened the “kulak operation”: regional arrest quotas, summary trials by troikas and two sentence categories, execution or 8 to 10 years in the camps.
MG-00031956Official document