Following the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks created forced labor camps (Gulags) for political opponents and criminals. Expanded massively under Stalin, they became instruments of repression and economic development.

Gulag literature, epitomized by Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, exposed totalitarianism, influencing global dissident poetry and human rights-themed verse by poets like Brodsky.