When a person was imprisoned, by law their families - wives, children, brothers, sisters and parents - had to go to court and divorce or disown the person, as it was an imprisonable offense itself to be related to an enemy of the people. Upon release, a prisoner had no family to go home to.
Under the Soviet system, a person was banished from the Moscow Center (Red Square) by a distance of kilometers.<ref>An internal passport system required individuals to carry papers showing restrictions, the number of kilometers a person was banned from the Moscow Center.</ref> The farthest being 7000 kilometers, or the Kolyma River in far Eastern Siberia.<ref>https://youtu.be/mWA54jX-VtY</ref> 1500 to 3000 kilometers usually meant the salt mines of [[Kazakhstan]].<ref>https://vimeo.com/192420959</ref> 3500 to 5000 kilometers usually was the logging camps of the River Lena in central Siberia.<ref>https://youtu.be/PA8gBxOAlu0</ref> The camps were filled mostly with dissidents and the [[unemployed]] from the large cities, such as [[Moscow]] and [[Leningrad]]. Dissidents were mainly political prisoners or religious protestors. Political prisoners were branded "enemies of the working class," or more commonly, "enemies of the people." The unemployed were branded "social parasites," similiar the [[National Socialist]] category of "shiftless elements."<ref>[[Marx]] did not consider homeless vagabounds, the [[lumpen masses]], as fit for the workers' revolution. Marx considered desperately impoverished people as tools of the "beougeoie," who would do anything for money, sell out revolutionary ideology, and not to be trusted.</ref>
When a person served out their time behind barbed wire, the system of internal banishment remained in place. A released prisoner then usually had to settle down in the village or community neighboring the Gulag camp where the guards and their families lived,<ref>Some cities and place names on maps are entirely the creation of the Gulag system as it was a vital part of Soviet economic development. Population statistics on Cold War era National Geographic maps often reflect the size of the prison camp population, which typically was 90% of the figure shown in the map's population key.</ref> and find menial employment in some service sector industry supporting their former prison guard slave masters and their families.<ref>The former prisoners' housing often consisted of converted chicken coops or the basements of their former prison guard slave masters.</ref>
==Marxist theory==
Prisoners In addition to the unemployed, most others fell basically into two groups: political prisoners and thieves. While dissenters were considered enemies of the revolution, under Marxist [[class warfare]] theory, thieves are considered victims of [[bourgeois]] society and the propertied class.
While the bourgeois are "class enemies" of the working class, and dissenters "enemies of the people," thieves are considered "class allies" of socialism, the revolution, and the party. Hence a single thief was often deliberately placed within a group of political prisoners to sow mistrust, chaos, and division as a precaution against organized resistance.