This is the key. There were specifically prisons of different regimens. When a prisoner was "convicted" the regimen was a specific part of the sentence. A sentence to a "Harsh Regimen" facility was close to a death sentence. A sentence to a "Mild Regimen" was not much worse than any other prison in a country that was poor as dirt (i.e. it sucked, but wasn't designed to destroy you physically).Depends which gulag. Some were comparable to prisons in the US where prisoners were used in forced labour in chain gangs. However, couple that with putting the prison in a harsh environment with few resources and a bored, frustrated group of guards...
Didn't it depend to a degree if you had any useful skills, like some of the aircraft designers were in gulags and designed aircraft, though the concern that if you made a bad plane design , you stood a strong chance of a visit to a brick wall made up for in psychological torture.This is the key. There were specifically prisons of different regimens. When a prisoner was "convicted" the regimen was a specific part of the sentence. A sentence to a "Harsh Regimen" facility was close to a death sentence. A sentence to a "Mild Regimen" was not much worse than any other prison in a country that was poor as dirt (i.e. it sucked, but wasn't designed to destroy you physically).
Didn't it depend to a degree if you had any useful skills, like some of the aircraft designers were in gulags and designed aircraft, though the concern that if you made a bad plane design , you stood a strong chance of a visit to a brick wall made up for in psychological torture.