From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Sharashkas were secret research institutes in the Soviet Gulag prison-camp system. The scientists and engineers at a sharashka were prisoners culled from other camps and given relative freedom and comfort in exchange for their work on scientific and technological problems for the state. The results of this research were usually published under the names of prominent Soviet scientists without credit for the prisoners. Some sharashka prisoners were released during World War II and in the late 1950s and continued independent careers.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel First Circle is a vivid account of life in a sharashka.
