In one scene, star David Keith wears an orange-and-white University of Tennessee jacket. Keith is an alumnus of this university.
Gulag is defined by the Wikipedia website as "the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems during the Stalin era, from the 1930s until the 1950s." It is an acronym of a Russianword and translates into the English language as "main administration of the camps", usually translated 'Chief Directorate of Camps'."
According to the book "Movies Made for Television", the production "filmed in London (where a replica of a Soviet work camp was built in a limestone quarry) and Finse, Norway, where the Hardangerjokulen glacier doubled for the frozen Russian tundra".
One of three cold war and/or espionage movies that actor Shane Rimmer appeared in that were all first broadcast or released in 1985. The movies are Gulag (1985), White Nights (1985), and The Holcroft Covenant (1985). Rimmer has also appeared in such spy movies as S*P*Y*S (1974), Scorpio (1973), Hanover Street (1979), Company Business (1991) and A Man Called Intrepid (1979). Rimmer has worked also worked on the James Bond films You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).
The Film Yearbook Volume 5 (1986) stated that this tele-movie had "an Israeli script source", "an American production team", "British and Norwegian location shooting", and "budgetary back-up from the MFI Furniture Group PLC".