Posted on 03/05/2023 1:58:33 PM PST by Eleutheria5
A major political, historical, human and economic fact of the 20th century: the Gulag, the extremely punitive Soviet concentration camp system, remains largely unknown. The history of the Gulag is long, complex and in many ways out of the ordinary. From the Revolution of 1917 to Gorbachev, touching on the civil war, the Great Terror, World War II, the Cold War and the death of Stalin, this series describes the workings of the Gulag. How and why did the USSR create this system of forced- labour camps in which 20 million prisoners were exploited and worked to the bone? Through the exceptional fates of numerous protagonists, both executioners and victims, the history of the Gulag is deciphered with previously-unreleased documentary sources and the help of renowned historians and Gulag experts.
Episode 1: The first concentration style camps were set up as of 1918, a few months after the October Revolution. The new Bolshevik regime wished to rid itself of its political adversaries and use work to re-educate the so-called social misfits. The first wide-scale experiment was that of the Solovetsky Islands. Thousands of political prisoners and criminals, both men and women, were imprisoned there in inhumane conditions. After the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin came to power and launched the accelerated industrialisation of the country along with the collectivisation of agriculture, which would lead to deadly famines. Immense building projects were launched in the most remote regions such as Kolyma in Siberia. The GPU, the Communist Party's secret police, which was in charge of cleansing society and ridding it of undesirables, sent hundreds of thousands of Russians to the camps to participate in the establishment of socialism.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
I am currently reading “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It should be required reading in high school.
The Great Terror by Robert Conquest is, in my opinion, the definitive work on the subject.
The scale of human atrocities committed by the communists is far worse than even the atrocities of Hitler, yet few would believe it because it is never discussed by the communist sympathizers who control so many of the Western institutions like the media and the eduction systems. Few even know that these atrocities happened because it exposes the left.
But real socialism has never been tried!/irony
Maybe the senior classes can read.
Yes, required reading. Maybe in the Senior year, take the whole year to do it.
Do you known i actually had someone in their forties trot that out in a discussion. It was childish and dated in ‘67 when i first heard it used.
I don’t agree with Anne Applebaums politics at all, but her book Gulag was very interesting.
I can only read a few pages at a sitting too. It is a documentation of true evil. I have taken a break because it was just too gruesome. I read and then I clean my guns.
The Gulag Archepelago is wholesale. Coming out of the Ice is a personal account. They compliment each other very well.
Also, “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Work was only called off if the temperature dipped below -40.
Well, for the kids lacking the reading skills and/or the attention span, this series of documentaries might serve in lieu of Solzhenitsyn’s voluminous record, or to bring his work home in authentic pictures.
BKMK
They can just watch this, and understand why Communism, or Fascism always ends up like this.
The Road To Serfdom Cartoon (High Quality)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QD75lUm51s
The opening scenes look more like a movie set.
Gulag - Bump for later.
The Russian gulags are what inspired the name of AmericanGulag.org ... a website I had a hand in building.
Bump for later watching
Well done. I bookmarked it.
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