If you were starving, what would you do for food? "condensed milk" tells the story of a political prisoner in a russian gulag (a forced-labor camp) who is faced with a choice: stay in the gulag—working and starving—or escape from the prison and risk dying. what choice would you make? historical context: from 1929 to 1953, joseph stalin was the dictator of the soviet union. his goal was to transform the soviet union from a poor society into a world superpower. he used terror and violence to rule, and under his reign, millions of his own people died in work camps, from starvation due to famine, or by execution. select a detail to support the idea that russian gulags treated prisoners cruelly. prisoners faced choices. prisoners had to work. prisoners tried to escape. prisoners were starving.