Have you used Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago in any of your classes?
That itself is enough to disprove the rewriting of history.
Read it plus Anne Applebaum’s version. Had to skip through a lot-dry reading. Stalins mistake was thinking he could develop Russia(Siberia) with slave labor. Trumped up charges and sentences were the norm. I think it could work in the remote areas with legitimate convicts, the kind that need to be banished to serve their sentences. In Siberia the Chinese will some day(like now) will be too crowded. Time for Putin to get ahead of the curve. International convicts serving their time can labor there. Those that make a decent impression can stay. Win win.