Both Stalin and Hitler employed the use of violence during their political leadership, most prominently through the establishment of concentration camps. Stalin viewed many people in the Soviet Union to be his enemy. The fate of these people was to be either killed or sent to forced labor camps, known as the Gulags, due to a variety of reasons. Political leaders, wealthier peasants (known as kulaks), criminals of all types, and essentially anyone suspected of opposing Stalin’s rule were sent to these concentration camps to provide free labor for the benefit of the Soviet Union. Their primary tasks were in the production of lumber and the construction project to modernize the Soviet Union, such as the Moscow-Volga Canal (Gellately 256). Conditions
