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.
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Excellent movie with John Savage & Willie Nelson...pure evil
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This was great — thanks for posting.
Watched all 3 episodes. Not bad. No commentating by those who served as guards or anyone who still loved their country. It was 100% victims. I started feeling it wasn’t such a bad idea. Got the troublemakers out of the way-real and imagined. Is Russia much better now? They support Putin in Ukraine. Mentality is still the same. They need to bleed more.
In the early 1990’s, I had the (not serious) idea of paying Russia to keep about a million of the USA’s hardened criminals in their underused GULAG space. Paying them $1500 per year per head would save us about $50k each, the Russkies could extract some work out of them, and most would never come back. Family members might complain... Now we could supply Ukraine with criminals to pit against Russia’s.
*“The Gulag Archipelago” . It should be required reading in high school.* I don’t think so. Reading is too long and dry.
*The Great Terror by Robert Conquest* The subject is too deep for Most readers to commit to-500+ pages.
*Anne Applebaums-The Gulag* I read half of it. The theme was Russians wanting to put it behind them. Started out with the canal that didn’t work.
*Ivan Denisovich*-shorter.
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