Posted on 02/11/2005 6:24:02 PM PST by koba37
Edited on 02/11/2005 6:29:06 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
A document from Russian archives lists American servicemen in Soviet custody in May 1945.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. military service members may have been imprisoned and died in Soviet forced-labor camps during the 20th century, according to a Pentagon report to be released Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at aiipowmia.com ...
Fifty years will pass since the end of the Soviet Union, and we will STILL discover horrific new facts about socialist/liberal/communist atrocities.
"So-called"? They sure as hell weren't day-spas.
/GULAGS in America...
/sarcasm
This was known for a long time now. Only liberals were denying it.
I recommend Anne Applebaum's book GULAG. I didn't think it was worthy of the Pulitzer it won, but it tells how bad it really was. There is a heartbreaking story of a woman who had a child in the GULAG and how the child was systematically starved to death. For those interested in the evils of communism I recommend The Black Book of Communism. Originally published in France it is a bit difficult to find, is very text bookish to read, but details the crimes of most of the major communist governments.
Since its inception communist governments have kept POWs from every war they ever fought. I'm not sure how anyone can think we got all our POWs back from the Korean and Viet Nam wars. It would buck the trend.
I wasn't clear in my point. How could the prisoners in Soviet GULAGs be "so-called GULAGs." GULAG was the Soviet term for the government body that ran the camps. They are GULAGs by definition.
Amazon still showing the "Black Book" as available. I recommend it too. Another very interesting book on the old Soviet system is "Lenin's Tomb" by David Remnick, Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
GULag is an acronym. It means Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerej (Main Directorate of Camps). For the naysayers who claim the Sovs wouldn't have dared do this to Americans - rubbish. They did it to German POWS (some released after Stalin's death), Hungarians (one was found 3 years ago in a mental hospital - returned to Hungary and passed away 2 years ago), Japanese, Poles, etc., etc., etc.. There were some non-military Americans who were sent to the camps, but they were fellow travelers who fell afoul of the security apparatus for being foreign. Some were released (after Stalin's death).
Contrary to what some on FR claim about present day Russia and censorship - "Black Book on Communism" and "Lenin's Tomb" are easily found in Moscow (and elsewhere) in Russian. The "Black Book on Communism" was the most purchased book at the book store "Moscow" last year. For any who doubtthis - I have them both in the Russian language versions.
This has been known for a long time by people who follow such matters, but it has never been officially admitted by the government. Kudos to Bush and Rumsfeld if they finally release the records.
The next question is what about the POW-MIAs in Vietnam? It's well known that many were left to rot, and it's fairly well established that some of them were sent to China and/or the USSR, where they died in prison camps.
Two of the people who covered up their fates and blocked any real investigation were Kerry and McCain. If not for them, some of the POWs might have been recovered while they were still alive.
It's doubtful whether anything will be released on the Vietnam POWs, however. Too many of the players are still in power, and we wouldn't want to embarrass them.
We and Russia were on the same side in 1944,,why would they have held our men???
For those who read and understand Russian go to this link:
http://www.idf.ru/editions.shtml You should be able to download their book on the GULags - called "GULAG." I can't get the links to work right now. I have a hardcopy - it's a book full of documental evidence, maps, reports, etc., all from the Soviet (now Russian archives). It's published by the Internation Democracy Foundation - headed by Aleksandr Yakovlev (the man behind "Perestroika" and "Glasnost" - to any lurking Golitsynites - don't bother responding to me, we've already beat the dead horse of the Perestroika topic to death).
You can also go to this link:
http://www.idf.ru/editions.shtml
Here you will find letters of complain to Stalin, etc., about the abuses (there were some brave people in the Soviet Union - or perhaps, naive). There are also recollections of GULag survivors.
Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago (which rhymes in Russian, Archipelag Gulag), is a wonderful book but Solzhenitsyn is a very demanding writer and few people can stick with him through three volumes of Stalinist perfidy.
Robert Conquest is another author whose pre-Soviet-collapse work stood up perfectly to the new revelations. The Great Terror makes sense of the show trials and purges of the thirties, and Harvest of Sorrow explains how Communist leaders used famine as a political weapon (much as Communist Robert Mugabe, and islamist leaders in Sudan, do today).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
They were "Allies" - and they liberated camps in Eastern Europe. The liberated POWS were sick, injured, etc. - and they would not have been able to cross the front lines to their own armies. Therefore, the Sovs sent them to the rear to camps where they were treated and isolated (couldn't have them mingling with the locals could they?).
Solzhenitsyn is very hard to stick with - perhaps he's too damn "smart" for the rest of us mere mortals! His writing/works are immensely popular in Russia. His latest series is called "200 Years Together" - a History book. I have it, but haven't read it yet. I have been told it has some pretty anti-Semitic rantings in it.
I wouldn't be suprised to find that some of the prisoners in the Soviet Gulag system were POWs from Korea or Vietnam, either.
I wouldn't be surprised if Korea transferred POWs to the Soviet Union - a lot of the Korean leadership came from the Soviet Union. Vietnam is a whole different situation.
Get the abridged version. It's authorized, too. Only one volume. I'm reading it currently, and loving it.
You'd have to ask Stalin that. He was not a pleasant character, and as the war wound down he was already maneuvering for the postwar advantage.
Why did Stalin kill 10,000 Polish officers about that time? I suppose clinton would say, "Because he could."
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