Definition of "katorga"

Sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the Siberian mines, he defied the Russian tyrant by his funeral oration at the grave of Dmokhovsky, his boldness resulting in an additional fifteen years of katorga.

1912, Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist

However, brutal floggings, increased terms of katorga, starvation diets, permanent chaining to a wheelbarrow and other fearsome sanctions failed to staunch the flow.

1991, Alan Wood, The History of Siberia: from Russian conquest to revolution

Under the Bolsheviks there was going to be an end to the katorga.

2007, Edward Crankshaw, Cracks in the Kremlin Wall