The GULag system?

[NorwegianCommunist]

A lot of people in my school talk about the GULag system and how they killed over 10 millions people.
But after what I have read, all the deaths that happend during the GULag camps was because of lack of food and really bad weather.
Kulaks owned 50% of all the food growth in the USSR and they had high prices and did not cooperate with the state.

That is info I have gathered with some researching, but is this true? and also, is this something I can use as an argument?
Im am hoping for nice answares that wil help me understand it more. So please, no mean comments to eachother =)

[PhoenixAsh]

THe Gulag was an agency that was responsible for the prison system....and part of the NKVD.

The numbers which I have seen estimate the number of deaths in the high estimates around 2 million....over a 30 year period.

And these have not been totally and completely covered by the archives.

Around 10 million people may have passed through the system of prison camps....during the entire period they existed.


I am not entirely sure why you are talking about food growth. You might mean the Sovchoz and Kolchoz systems. Which is seperated by the distinction that within the Sovchoz system farmers worked in service of the state against fixed wages....and in the Kolchoz system they were basically working for a share of the profits in service to nobody collectively owning the farm and being allowed to own a small plot of land and a house on personal title. Income wasn't fixed and a share of the produce would be claimed by the state at a fixed price.

[Prometeo liberado]

I was on a Uni of Hawaii website this morn and read a paper that put the total number of Gulag deaths at 61,795. I think it may well be a typo, 6,179,500 sounds a little closer.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I was on a Uni of Hawaii website this morn and read a paper that put the total number of Gulag deaths at 61,795. I think it may well be a typo, 6,179,500 sounds a little closer.

If it was on University of Hawaii it was probably 61.795.000, and by ol' Ruddy Rummel. He's employed there. Why in the world he isn't fired for being a dumb fuck incapable of doing any own research (and for writing atrocious fiction books about going back in time to make sure freedom and great capitalist prospers) anyone can guess, but probably it involves politics somehow.

[Prometeo liberado]

If it was on University of Hawaii it was probably 61.795.000, and by ol' Ruddy Rummel. He's employed there. Why in the world he isn't fired for being a dumb fuck incapable of doing any own research (and for writing atrocious fiction books about going back in time to make sure freedom and great capitalist prospers) anyone can guess, but probably it involves politics somehow.
By that math there wouldn't have been a country. Amazing.:confused:

[GoddessCleoLover]

The GULag system was awful, enslaving and working to death large numbers of Soviet citizens on projects ranging from the White Sea-Baltic Sea canal to the gold mines of Kolyma. MY advice is to repudiate it, not apologize for it, and advocate a new type of proletarian state in which the DoP means the democratic rule of the working class as envisaged by Marx, Engels, Lenin in The State and Revolution and other theorists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Amadeo Bordiga, Antonio Gramsci, Andres Nin and others.

[Drosophila]

Over 1,000 die each year in US jails...and they have adequate food and living conditions. Anyone who puts the Gulag death toll at 50 million is an idiot.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/(S(g0zwk0jou1x4vz45tgqzpf45))/displayArticle.aspx?articleid=22841&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1


The camps had a massive surge during WWII (something like 179,000 before and over 2 million after). Around 40% of the prisoners were released after the war. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev continued to imprison people for political reasons.

[Invader Zim]

If it was on University of Hawaii it was probably 61.795.000, and by ol' Ruddy Rummel. He's employed there. Why in the world he isn't fired for being a dumb fuck incapable of doing any own research (and for writing atrocious fiction books about going back in time to make sure freedom and great capitalist prospers) anyone can guess, but probably it involves politics somehow.

One word:

Tenure

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Might be worth noticing that the Gulags where a extended organ of the whole prisionsystem in the USSR, and enheritaged frome the tsarist era. Both Lenin, Stalin and Bakunin had been inprisioned in in siberian labour camps. Its also important to remmember that during this time forced labour where verry common in most countries prision system (and still is today).
This does ofcourse not apologize for the fact that many innocent people where sent there, its just easy to forget the context and the historical perspective.

The only reliable facts ive come across about the death toll is Staffan Lindgrens chapter in the book "Without Honour" (Lindgrens stats are frome the russian archives, before Putin choosed to close them again) where he comes to the conclusion of that, totally, around 11 million people where imrisioned in the Gulags. As menthioned above, the culmination where during, and slightly after, ww2 because of the high amounts of POW. Of theese, around 600000 people died inside the camps, commes to a death toll of around 5%, during a period of 30 years.

[The Intransigent Faction]

We can play the numbers game and nitpick over statistics, but how productive is that in terms of moving forward in the struggle against capitalism? Not very. It also doesn't justify what happened in the Gulags.

That said, this is a history forum, so...
Anyone else here checked out "Gulag: A History" by Anne Applebaum and have any thoughts on it (other than that, yes, the author is fairly reactionary from what I've seen)?

A number of innocent people died in a variety of ways who were sent there for a variety of reasons. Even, for example, some Soviet prisoners of war caught in Nazi Germany were sent to them under the rational that if you survived German captivity you were more likely than not a traitor. These and other people were worked to death, or froze to death, among other things. To my knowledge, some were directly killed.

All in all, definitely one of the reasons to condemn the vanguardist version of "Socialism" of an authoritarian regime.

[Drosophila]

We can play the numbers game and nitpick over statistics, but how productive is that in terms of moving forward in the struggle against capitalism? Not very. It also doesn't justify what happened in the Gulags.


No one's saying it was justified. There's just a lot of misconceptions about it that should be addressed.

[Mettalian]

All in all, definitely one of the reasons to condemn the vanguardist version of "Socialism" of an authoritarian regime.

I don't think it's fair to characterize all Leninists as being in favour of Gulags. I criticize them very harshly; I'm not convinced (as I've heard others say) that they inevitably arise from Leninism. It, as was previously said, is important to remember the historical context that played a part in their creation (though of course that doesn't justify them). We should try and understand them better so that we can avoid them cropping up in different forms in the future.

[piet11111]

Its always about comparing the soviets to the nazi's isn't it ?

Nazi's killed 6 million jews in the camps (if you count all hated groups a lot more but i do not not what bodycount that would add up to) so the soviet numbers must be inflated to at least 10 million.

And usually this seems to be done by american "historians"

[The Intransigent Faction]

No one's saying it was justified. There's just a lot of misconceptions about it that should be addressed.

Of course. I wasn't accusing anyone. Just felt important to say first thing that we shouldn't focus excessively on the numbers issue, but maybe more the purpose/structure of the system itself.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I don't think it's fair to characterize all Leninists as being in favour of Gulags. I criticize them very harshly; I'm not convinced (as I've heard others say) that they inevitably arise from Leninism. It, as was previously said, is important to remember the historical context that played a part in their creation (though of course that doesn't justify them). We should try and understand them better so that we can avoid them cropping up in different forms in the future.

Well saying the abuses almost inevitably arose from vanguardism is one thing. You could make that argument, certainly. My point was never to accuse all Leninists of being in favour of Gulags, but the fact is they existed, though perhaps they were run differently, when Lenin was the Soviet leader.
Maybe not all Leninists support what Lenin did with them, but as you say, it's something to account for in studying Soviet history.

[GoddessCleoLover]

We ought to face up to the fact that the GULag system was developed by the vanguard party, and this is just one of many reasons to leave behind the failed vanguard model. Workers are aware of the GULag and the other abuses of power and they no longer support vanguard parties. I am old enough to remember when the Italian, French, and Portuguese Communist parties had huge mass followings, but no longer. Even in countries that are still formally governed by the vanguard parties, they govern as oppressors of the workers. If we want to revive the revolutionary workers' movement, we must move beyond the vanguard model to a model of workers' democracy.

[Zostrianos]

According to what I've read, most people who entered the Gulags survived, and though there were many executions, most of the deaths are attributable to malnutrition and neglect.



Nazi's killed 6 million jews in the camps (if you count all hated groups a lot more but i do not not what bodycount that would add up to) so the soviet numbers must be inflated to at least 10 million.
And usually this seems to be done by american "historians"

The Nazis killed more people than Stalin:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/

All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million.

Stalin didn't have gas chambers, and Stalinist purges and terrors were more sporadic than the savage brutality the Nazis used. As a point of comparison, during the Great Terror the NKVD would go into towns, arrest a lot of the men, then interrogate them, deport a few to the Gulag and execute most of them. The Nazis would simply go into a town, kill everyone (women and children included, sometimes raping the women before killing them) and demolish or torch the whole village. As bad as the NKVD was, they generally avoided executing women and children (unless you count the starvation in Ukraine). The Nazis on the other hand had no restrictions whatsoever.

[Tovarisch]

The gulags were terrible, and a perfect example of Stalinist capitalism, or should I say fascism?

My grandmother recalls that every night she went to sleep in fear. She knew that any night, the police could knock down her door and send everyone across the country. To be fair to Stalinists though, the practice of sending people to the Gulags wasn't exactly new, the tsars effectively practiced Siberianism long before Stalin came to power

[Zostrianos]

And the worst thing is you could get sent to the Gulags for anything - e.g. possession of religious objects (e.g. rosaries, crucifixes) was punishable by 10 years.


To be fair to Stalinists though, the practice of sending people to the Gulags wasn't exactly new, the tsars effectively practiced Siberianism long before Stalin came to power

The Gulags were essentially expanded versions of the Tsarist katorgas.