The long journey that led to incarceration in a Gulag prison camp began with arrests almost anywhere and for reasons that ranged from the offensive to the outright absurd.

Descriptions from camp survivors tell tales of being picked up by the NKVD secret police with no notice, no equivalent to the Miranda rights, no rights to an attorney or a trial, and no warrants. This could occur at a sports match, at a restaurant, on the street, at work, or even at home in the middle of the night. The police agents would give someone only a few minutes to gather a few personal possessions. Men, women, and children would then be escorted out to a waiting police van, similar to an armored truck, and locked inside with others. These trucks were called black ravens, as they would spirit the accused away to interrogation in the black of the night.

After interrogation, a person might've spent a night in a prison cell or been immediately locked in a cattle car on a train with others for days while traveling to a Gulag camp. Conditions on the trains were cruel. In the summer, the heat was sweltering, while in the winter, the cold was unbearable. Only a hole in the floor served as a toilet, and the sole food given was salted fish. Many perished from dehydration or froze to death. To make room, their bodies were thrown from the cattle car and left on the side of the railway tracks. And that was just the ride to the Gulag.