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Comment by well_ackshually | Hacker News Reader

Yes, Soljenitzin is not a revolutionary new thing nobody has heard from.

Conditions in gulags were fucking dreadful, the same way conditions post any revolution when it came to repressing those who would put down a revolution would be: american prisons post reovlution weren't better, french prisons post revolution weren't better, etc: every single revolution has pretty much ended with a period of terror, and Lenin's wasn't different.

As it remains, the subject isn't gulags (which are, undeniably, work camps, though not death camps), but regular prisons. which existed. Which were the same damn thing as american prisons, except you would come out of it and probably have a house at least.

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If you read his books - your dismissive comment does not make it clear whether you did - you know the Soviet judicial system - for what it was worth - made a difference between 'normal' criminals like thieves and murderers and 'political criminals'. The former were considered to be less dangerous to the Party and 'the revolution' and as such were given better treatment than the latter. In the GULAG system they ('normal criminals') were used to harass those who were put away for political reasons ('enemies of the people', 'traitors of the motherland', etc.), many if not most of them trumped up.

Your claim of those camps being 'work camps, though not death camps' make me suspect you did not read The GULAG Archipelago since some camps in effect served both roles for political prisoners by setting rations, work schedules and prisoner amenities like clothing to such levels that they were almost assured to lead to death. That last line about Soviet prisoners having it better than American ones since they would 'come out of it and probably have a house at least' is just laughable and shows you're parroting Howard Zinn or some other propagandist. Read a book, read another one, read some real history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_Soviet_Union

"Western observers described Soviet prisons and corrective institutions as involving harsh living conditions, arbitrary treatment, abuse by officials, poor rations and serious human-rights violations"

I'm going to assert that US prisons are far better than these socialist prisons. And that is still the case in contemporary socialist regimes like Cuba (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba where they still purposefully starve prisoners and totally deny medical care)

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