The Gulag: Dissecting Lies from Truth

Collaborated piece from Charles O'Connell and Chris Pitre

“Gulag is a Russian acronym for Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps”

Written by Charles O'Connell:

Gulags are famous within western culture under the myth that it was a tool used by the “oppressive” soviet “dictatorship” to silent dissidents. This is a myth for a reason.
The reality is: It was a progressive alternative to the Tsarist prison system, used to hold murderers, thieves, rapists, and other major criminals, including individuals of terrorist organizations from causing chaos in the state, and violent anti-government reactionaries who caused acts of terror.

Joseph Stalin is famous for the gulag, however, the gulag was a proposed policy by Vladimir Lenin in 1918. The gulag was to provide a prison system for the new Socialist state, this was to keep criminals from being freed and running throughout the country causing chaos and destruction. Not only was this policy brought to deal with the criminals of the old Russian Tsarist prison system, but also to deal with the imprisonment of White Army soldiers captured during the civil war.

Chris spoke on the subject of the Soviet gulags. Chris Pitre's grandparents use to live in Soviet Romania, he carries knowledge passed on to him from those who lived in the Soviet society.

Written by Chris Pitre:

"The Gulags were a prison system constructed to house high profile or maximum security criminals. In its early inception, through the civil war and Nazi paranoia, political prisoners were housed and military officials were executed. Contradictory to the outrageous claims of ten to one hundred million dead, the Gulags saw only 850,000 executed. Additional deaths were attributed to diseases, such as a tuberculosis outbreak which was later identified. a serum was produced to crush the outbreak. Prisoners sent to the Gulags would be transported via railway to remote and isolated areas of northern Russia where escape would be difficult. The inmates, unlike western prisons. Did not keep all inmates sealed into cages. Violent and unpredictable inmates were isolated to avoid harming other prisoners; But for the general population, they slept in what would resemble a military barracks. An electric fence would surround the prisons, but in many cases the fences were turned off, either during power outages or to conserve electricity; This is significant, because the idea of escape was infallible, the idea to contain was unnecessary. The inmates would wake and begin performing work. There were workshops, some inmates paved roads, woodshops, inmates could volunteer to work as assistants within the prison offices (such as a doctor or nurse's aid, or a Secretary to the warden of your section). All based on good behavior and merit systems.

A well known myth of the Gulags is that at its pique under Stalin, the ranks swelled to roughly 100,000,000. This was reported to a French news agency from a sergeant in the Red Army who was detained there. But there are two glaring flaws with this. One, it was not customary for Gulag prisoners to go around counting themselves. Two, the population of this time (1940s) was roughly 170,000,000. The myth would have you believe that 'more than half' of a nations own people, after war and decimation, were incarcerated for hating their own country, while the other half stood around watching them."