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Originally Posted by spdrun
Actually, the USSR didn't have the death penalty for a long time under Stalin. People were just sent to concentration camps to be worked to death or shot while trying to escape.
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Or shot for not working hard enough, and buried where they fell, sometimes becoming part of their task:
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Forced labour was used to construct every inch of this incredible project – at first by inmates of labour camps, but later by the unfortunate denizens of the gulags that began springing up all over these near-uninhabitable provinces of Stalin’s Soviet empire. Many were Russian POW’s, banished to the region after being labelled German ‘collaborators’. Many were Russian Christians who refused to renounce their faith under the Communist regime.
Prisoners were chained except when they were working their twelve-hour shifts. Many died during transport alone, and thousands were shot by the officers for not working hard enough. And any worker who died during construction of the road was ‘buried’ where he fell – survivors’ reports indicate that bodies were as common a sight as fallen logs.
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A bit more information and a few pictures here:
Stalin's Road of Bones