This book is a new and chilling study of lethal human exploitation in the Soviet forced labor camps, one of the pillars of Stalinist terror. The book is a shocking study of life and death in Stalin's Gulag. It demonstrates how the ruthless exploitation of prisoners, their hunger, and a lack of medical care turned the camps into destructive-labor camps, and suggests that these forced labor camps were often administered as death camps. Examining the Gulag penal system through the lens of health, medicine, and human exploitation, this book draws from previously inaccessible archives to offer a chilling new view of one of the pillars of Stalinist terror.