Lenin & Gulag/Cheka

[AutomaticMan]

Hi,

I was wondering, can anyone point me in the direction of a nonbias account of Lenin's opinions on stuff like the Gulag and Cheka?
I've heard people say the Gulags were set up after Lenin's death, but also that he supported concept of slave-labour?
And what about the Cheka and torture? Even if all the most horrific types of torture are lies, every lie has a grain of truth, and they probably did practice torture. What did Lenin think of this?

I'm just wondering really, but I'd also like some definite sources so I can show people after they start spouting shit about torture and slavery and massacres, whatever. Or maybe they're right..?

Thanks all.

[Vargha Poralli]

Those accounts might be probably true given the circumstances present in the Soviet Russia at the timeline. When you are politically isolated from the rest of the world and your enemies are helll bent on crushing you you have very little options left to survive which was done by the Bolsheviks at that time.This eventually lead to the bureaucratic nightmare under Stalin's rise.

Clearly this is a lesson to us but no one can be certain what the circumstances might dictate us for very basic survival.

[Valeofruin]

Hi,

I was wondering, can anyone point me in the direction of a nonbias account of Lenin's opinions on stuff like the Gulag and Cheka?
I've heard people say the Gulags were set up after Lenin's death, but also that he supported concept of slave-labour?
And what about the Cheka and torture? Even if all the most horrific types of torture are lies, every lie has a grain of truth, and they probably did practice torture. What did Lenin think of this?

I'm just wondering really, but I'd also like some definite sources so I can show people after they start spouting shit about torture and slavery and massacres, whatever. Or maybe they're right..?

Thanks all.

First of all Gulags were not slave labour, they were prisons, and like all prisons, including those in the USA they had a labour system.

They always existed in the region since tsarist Russia, Prison camps weren't any sort of a new development under Stalin, like the left opposition would lead you to believe. This is just common knowlege.

As for the Cheka, Lenin spoke of the 'Red Terror' in his 'Letter to the American Workers', I believe it is relevant, as the accusations of torture, and terror, and whatever other hypocritical nonsense, stem from this.

"Their servants accuse us of resorting to terror. . . . The British bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1649, the French bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1793. Terror was just and legitimate when the bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own benefit against feudalism. Terror became monstrous and criminal when the workers and poor peasants dared to use it against the bourgeoisie! Terror was just and legitimate when used for the purpose of substituting one exploiting minority for another exploiting minority. Terror became monstrous and criminal when it began to be used for the purpose of overthrowing every exploiting minority, to be used in the interests of the vast actual majority, in the interests of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, the working class and the poor peasants!" Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/20.htm)