THE ETYMOLOGY NERD
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Word Archives
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • MORE
    • Retail Reviews
    • Cartoons
    • Clarifications
    • Resources
    • Accomplishments

ABBREVIATED GULAG

8/7/2017

0 Comments

 
This post was both requested and is highly interesting to me. As soon as the Bolsheviks took power, they began organizing labor camps as early as 1919. Once Lenin died and Stalin (whose name means steel) took power, he began to standardize the labor camps, setting up an administration to deal with it. This administration, formed in 1931, was called the glavnoe upravlenie ispravitelno-trudoykh lagerei, which meant "main administration of labor camps". Since that was a mouthful, they took those letters I bolded and abbreviated that mouthful to gulag. Soon, through metynomy, that administration's cool new name got applied to the camps themselves. Later on in the '70s, newly-McCarthyist Americans picked up the word to showboat the atrocities of the Communists, and that's how gulag entered US pop culture. Suprisingly, the stylization Gulag is much more prevalent than gulag or GULAG, and usage has plateaued recently.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    AUTHOR

    Picture
    Adam Aleksic is a 217-month-old, 2800-ounce high school senior with disturbing interests in etymology, vexillology, geography, board games, and law. Adam is anxiously awaiting his college rejections and loves writing about himself in the third person.
      Please check the word archives first
    Submit
    CONFUSED?
      

    Archives

    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016

    The Etymology Nerd

Picture

A lexophile's sanctum - Over 90,000 served!

Home • Blog • Interesting Infographics • Retail Reviews • Cartoons • Clarifications • Word Archives • Resources • Accomplishments
CONTACT: etymologynerd@gmail.com
TWITTER • INSTAGRAM • YOUTUBE • RSS
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Word Archives
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • MORE
    • Retail Reviews
    • Cartoons
    • Clarifications
    • Resources
    • Accomplishments