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Collection of publications and photo about Gulag - disputed?

I included an external link to http://gulag.ipvnews.org/ - Collection of publications and photo about Gulag by IPV News (Russian). The content is very interesting and very graphic. However, someone disputed correctness of the site's contents. I have checked what exactly was disputed. It is claimed that some of the photos published by IPV news were known previously, and there is nothing new about them - see http://a-dyukov.livejournal.com/22061.html?mode=reply (Russian). There was nothing else. There are no any doubts from any side that the photos are authentic. The site by IPV news includes also an interesting article about special KGB/FSB detachments who are responsible for "active measures" in the internet: http://gulag.ipvnews.org/article20060916_01.php Biophys 03:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC) .

Yes, their being authentic was disputed. Examples included a photo, claimed to be from a Soviet camp, but in fact -- from a Nazi camp.

The site itself. Hmm. A random article. "Why did THIS happen?!" Let's look on it:

"This atrocity and slavery is eternally written in genes of Russians as the nation, it came in their subconsciousness during the centuries of Russian history."

"This nuclear dinosaur will of course share the fate of all different dinosaurus, it's doubtless, and it's this that will denote in the nearest future the historical progress of the humankind. The question is only in time and price -- how many will it manage to eat before it's death..."

Nice, don't you think so? Who is the author? Boris Stomakhin! Ah, Boris Stomakhin! He was recently jailed for fomenting national and religious strife, and calls for carrying out extremist activity. Nice, don't you think so? ellol 11:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Not NPOV / Conditions

The GULAG was generally oriented towards keeping its labour force in humane condition ...

Are you kidding me? This article is a disaster and ought to be locked. It positively reeks of political agenda. As for the estimate of the number of victims, which is lower than those commonly cited, there should at the very least be a discussion of the difficulty in reaching a single number, and mention of the fact that reputable sources reach different conclusions on the subject. But suggesting that working conditions were "humane" goes beyond the pale. Is spending the night huddled against a corpse in the hopes of getting an extra bread ration in the morning, as my father did in 1944, 15 years old at the time, evidence of a humane working condition? 128.255.85.47 18:41, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Seconded - as I said at the end of the 'fatalaties' section of this talk page, the amount of defense and support of a ghastly soviet policy, perhaps equal to or perhaps surpassing the nazi holocaust depending which figures are cited, is shocking, and the evidence of this worrying bias is clear to see in the article. vwozone 21:59, 2 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Thirded if i may say so. After reading this article and still having a living grandfather who went through Solovki, this entire article simply disgusts me. It reads as a rebuttal and a denial of the fact that many millions of Russian people as well as Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanins and many others perished in the Gulags, in fact, a great many more then in the NS concentration camps and the fact is that Germans copied all of the elements and framework of the Soviet Gulags for their own system.

This article reads as if Mr. Putin had one of his new whitewash-stalin "historians" write it for him. To people who say that these were not concentration camps, you are disgraceful and brainwashed or hide a political agenda. If you deny that millions of people perished in purges and exterminations (the conditions were specifically kept as to have you last a certain number of days, after which a new shipment was made and you were dead and replaced, if you were not fit for labor, you were killed) in the Gulags, then you're also denying the Holocaust or you have a reason to spread your bias and propaganda. Please replace this article with something a little less NKVD censored.

On one occasion 6,114 peasants, described as "backward elements," were dumped on the uninhabited island of Nazino; after three months 4,000 of them were dead, and those who survived had become cannibals. Yet the conditions were "humane" in the Gulags the article states. People were tortured, maimed, killed, raped, turned into cannibals yet this article says the camps were not for extermination. Where did the author get this idea? Just because the Soviets said it was a labor camp means it was a labor camp? Nazis said the exact same thing, you will find nowhere in the German documents that Auschwitz was an extermination camp. Yet it is accepted as a death camp everywhere, but Soviet camps aren't? A double standard isn't it.

Regarding my edits in the "Conditions" section: while it is flattering to see one's own work quoted here, the use of the article authored by L. Borodkin and myself in this context stroke me as not quite appropriate. Our piece makes an argument about administrative policies and intentions and does not talk all that much about actual conditions in the camps. Also, whoever added this reference simply copied three various, almost arbitarily chosen paragraphs (verbatim, if one ignores some slight inaccuracies) without clarifying in which ways the information therein is of relevance in the given context.

Thus, I cut most of the quoted text and attempted to write instead some sentences containing some information a reader might actually expect in this section. These additions are preliminary and might well be modified or expanded. The last sentences in the section (about categories) are still highly unsatisfactory, but I don't have unlimited time so I just let them stand as they are. S. Ertz 19:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Your edit, while being a considerable improvement, deleted several details. In the future please don't do this. If you delete some fact, you better explain your deletion. `'mikka 22:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

You are right, I deleted/significantly cut some passages. Let me explain, then, that most of them simply gave a distorted picture of the findings of the article from which they were taken (and, in fact, of "conditions" in the camps as well).

In the original text of the article, the passage including details about regulations concerning the receipt of monetary bonuses, which I have cut, is followed by several paragraphs that (1) show just how paltry these sums actually were and (2) present a case study of how the administration of an important camp complex repeatedly diminished these payments to prisoners in order to save costs.

Also, after the sentences about the GULAG permanently sending out orders and regulations, which I have cut/qualified, our article goes on: "In contrast, camp managers (and their immediate subordinates) in many cases appeared less interested in maintaining bearable living and working conditions, and often proved crude, cruel, and indifferent in their dealings with prisoners."

As I said, the article is mostly about administrative policies of the central agencies. Thus it focuses on the motivations prevailing at the top level rather than on conditions "on the ground". Yet this does not mean that it would lend itself easily to the construction of an argument that conditions in the camps were "just fine".

Finally, I now realize that I also deleted some details about the benefits of being a Stakhanovite in the camps. If others deem this information essential, one might well restore it. Yet as I understand, this ought to be an encyclopedia article that provides, first and foremost, the *key* facts about a phenomenon. One might argue what amount of more detailed information it might include in addition to those. However, I would argue that, in general, one should avoid including details about just one aspect while completely omitting other, more significant things, since the resulting overall picture will necessarily be a skewed one. From an enormous amount of sources and a vast literature we learn about hunger, exposure to severe climatic conditions, exhaustion, deprivation, humiliation, debasement, arbitrary and cruel treatment, violence, sickness, parasites, and, last not least, death. Not at all times and places and not for every single prisoner these were daily experiences. But in the system as a whole, most of them were quite common, and some were ubiquitous. I would suggest that readers should learn about this before they are told, for instance, whether prisoners were officially entitled to receive 100 or 150 rubles a month. S. Ertz 01:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Not disagreeing with what you said, any detail is a valid piece of information in an encyclopedia. If you feel that the "100-150" skews the picture, you may compare this number with an average salary at this time. Similarly in other cases. Once again, simply deleting is not an option. Misplaced Pages articles grow from multiple contributions, but this happens unevenly, and there is no reasons to panic when at some moment some pieces are out of balance. Surprisingly enough things eventually get worked out, even if not as fast as one might want. `'mikka 03:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I understand that you (as many of us) are a busy person and not always have the time to address some issue. If you are removing some pieces (rather than simply rephrasing them), you are advised to move them into the talk page, so that other editors may find better use of them (unless it is patent nonsense or lie). `'mikka 03:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Kolyma

Please take note of my comments below on the Kolyma page. If I am not mistaken, until an hour or two ago it was still under the Russian History project - like Gulag - but that category seems to have been removed. We need to resolve the NPOV dispute quickly in view of the high political importance of Kolyma in Europe.

I came to this page with no preconceived ideas. I saw the NPOV notice at the top and also the requirement for footnotes. I therefore decided to investigate the claims made and also look for counter arguments and evidence of a possible alternative interpretation. On this basis, I have undertaken a comprehensive edit of this article, in the light of other related articles, e.g. Gulag, other language pages, and links. In this connection, I have posted messages on the pages of Guinness man and of others involved in the hope that there would be some kind of reaction. I have also sent emails to some outside experts on the matter. Unfortunately, the only other contribution to the Kolyma page I am aware of has been a minor spelling change by Chris the speller. I have also followed up on the claim that there are no authentic references. I believe I have now provided all that can reasonably be expected - and certainly more than you can find on other pages relating to prison camps. Perhaps someone can tell me how I can have this page officially reviewed or how the warnings about neutrality and refernces at the top of the article can be removed. Ther may be a procedure that is not listed in the guidance. If I have no response on this within 24 hours, I will follow the guidance I have found and create new pages as follows:

A page on the Kolyma river (similar to those in most of the other language versions. (This will probably be the Kolyma (River) page.) A page on the Kolyma region (today's economy, industries, climate, relations with Alaska, future potential. A page on the Kolyma Gulag (with more or less the same philosophy as the Polish page on this but with much more detail and references. This may not be the optimal solution as there is also a notice on the Kolyma page that it is part of the Russian history project! I would like to point out that in Europe the Kolyma issue has reached a high level of attention and importance. The former Danish foreign minister, Mogens Lykketoft, - who has had years of experience with Russian policy - is about to launch a cross-party initiative to support the creation of a documentation centre/archive on Kolyma and the Soviet forced labour prison camps. When people go to our English-language Kolyma site and see the notice on lack of neutrality, it makes a very weak case for the reliabilty of Misplaced Pages. I hope there will be some reactions to this today or tomorrow. --Ipigott 00:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)--Ipigott 00:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I removed the tags and cleaned the text a bit. I believe that the issues are closed. `'mikka 02:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Mikka for your rapid response and clean-up. I contacted a number of contributors to Kolyma but you have been the only one to respond in a meaningful way. I also agree with you that the last section belongs more properly to the Gulag page. I'll try to find a citation on Stalin. If not, the sentence should simply be deleted unless the original contributor Yosef52 can come up with something himself.

z/k

Mr. Mikka You have deleted without comments my insert concerning originating of acronym zk (зек). That was developed by 1-st Chief of GULAG Lazar Kogan in the beginning of 1930-s. So I have a question: are you a volunteer of ADL? --83.237.166.246 18:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

What is the source of your claim? Not to say that Kogan was not "the first chief" of Gulag. `'mikka 00:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

z/k issue clarified. `'mikka 00:10, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

American Gulags

In the past few years it has become common to refer to the American Guantanamo prison as a "Gulag," due to the lack of due process and the indeterminate terms being visited upon prisoners there. Is a mention of this appropriate for this article? BushpigsGoneWild 05:41, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Not sure that it would. As far as I've read it Gulag prisoners served set terms, often extremely harsh (10 to 20 years) which given a fatality rate in the camps of 5% was sometimes a death sentence. If they did survive the term, they were frequently re-arrested and given another term. I don't think the legal limbo comparison helps. Under Soviet law, the gulag prisoners were guilty of political crimes - it was of course a travesty of justice as normally understood, but it's not really the same as the Guantanomo detainees. I think the observation about legal limbo for the detainees is interesting, but inserting it here really counts as original research and it's not supported by reliable sources. Isn't it going to end up being a very POV point about Guantanamo? Even thought the detainees there may not have due process, they aren't subject to forced labour, torture, rape or execution for minor infringements of rules. It's worth not reducing everything to 'being the same as the gulag'. Adamjamesbromley 15:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

• I see your points generally, but Gitmo IS being referred to as an American Gulag in many places, which is why I brought it up. I'm also not sure all Soviet gulag prisoners served definite terms. Gitmo also is seen as a travesty of justice by many, and I'm not sure you can really say prisoners there haven't been tortured, since it is well-established that waterboarding, hypothermia, sleep-deprivation, and "stress positions" have been used there. Sleep deprivation was one of the favorite Soviet methods per Solszhenitzyn. BushpigsGoneWild 01:11, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

• OK. But I don't this article is the right place to debate the issues surrounding Guantanamo. I'm sure it may have been described in the media as the 'American gulag', Tony Blair and George Bush have been called war criminals in plenty of newspapers but you wouldn't add that to their pages. Gitmo may well be a travesty of justice, but I think calling the American gulag will be misleading. For a start there's only one camp, so it's a gulag system of one. Granted there may be used of torture (but still nothing like as bad as the Soviet system), but let's be clear about the questions of degree. In the Soviet gulag, 1 in 20 prisoners died every year, in a good year. And also although it doesn't make it OK, there are a few 100 prisoners in Gitmo. The Gulags in Soviet states have 100,000s. The Gulag was a vast parallel state of prisoners and guards within the Soviet stae itself. I can appreciate your point, but it runs the risk of seriously skewing the article away from NPOV. That's all. Perhaps more about the Chinese lao gai or North Korean labour camps would add more? Wouldn't the better place to put that reference be in a piece on Guantanom, with the right references. Might work better there? Adamjamesbromley 08:34, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Good points, but - 1. The controversies over the actions of Bush and Blair vis a vis the war are mentioned on their pages. 2. Even though Gitmo is just one camp, the US also ran secret prisons in Europe where detainees were also mistreated, and then there's Abu Ghraib. 3. Over a hundred of these prisoners have died in US custody. 4. I suppose the real question is how common the use of the phrase "gulag" has to become in order for it to be mentioned in this article. But on balance I agree with you, we're not there yet. BushpigsGoneWild 14:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Picking up on your points, I think there are articles on detention, concentration camps etc where you could put that section. There is a reference to American gulag in the Camp Delta page, quoting Amnesty. So perhaps those pages are the right place to make those references? Why not add bits in there? Adamjamesbromley 17:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Numbers imprisoned / killed

I see: The total deaths shown by the declassified archives in the GULAG from 1931 to 1953 amount to about 1 million in "corrective labor camps." Another archival document contains the number of roughly 1.6 million deaths. I've just seen a Discovery-type program quoting former guards who suggest that during Stalin's rule (1927-53) some 40 million were imprisoned at one time or another, of whom 15 million died in the camps. Can anyone be more precise? The TV program could be wrong but seemed well made.86.42.202.69 20:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the article is probably in need of some serious work. The numbers of inmates seem low, the deaths seem low. To be honest, a lot of the articles on 20th communism seeem a bit shaky. Jacob Peters, banned for numerous violations, went onto lots of stuff and put in spurious pro-Stalinist nonsense. Haven't got the figures immediately to hand but Anne Applebaum's book is pretty definitive.

I've only recently started contributing to articles and this feels like another one to add to my list that need some serious attention. The Stalinism one is filled with dialetic Marxism stuff that has no place in Misplaced Pages. You're right to flag this up.

Thing is with heavy subjects like this, it takes time to do it justice. Maybe this one should be no 2. Adamjamesbromley 21:28, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that there are serious reasons to believe that the declassified documents contain correct data: gulag management had a number serious reasons to provide correct numbers in their internal reports and no reasons at all to minimize them. Old works, by Conquest, etc., were largely guesswork. Also, please keep in mind that there is the Memorial Society dedicated to document Stalinist repressions accurately, with numerous membership, and they produced a wealth of publications. I created many articles basing on them. So I would suggest instead of making a horror movie of this single article, let us write more articles about actual events and places, such as Kolyma, Kengir Uprising, or Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union. Bare facts and details say much more than some single number: 20 million prisoners is equally bad as 40 million. `'Míkka 23:47, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Míkka, I support your suggestion, but I doubt if Misplaced Pages should operate with categories "bad" and "good" in political and historical articles. If we take decimal logarithm of the estimate by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and round it to the nearest integer, this means 10 direct victims, and currently there is no available information to get better precision. May be, after your work we'll be able to estimate better. The unwillness of KGB to publish the detailed data indicates, that the total number can be even larger. As soon as the KGB archieves will be published (perhaps, next year), everyone will be able to estimate the number of direct victims with own program, just counting the number of files in such a database. The named information on victims would allow easy check for completeness. In addition, It is correct to deal with humans naming each by name, not with total number and not with total weight. ("Hello,Beria? That is Frenkel. We just had an accident in our camp; about of a half of workers are killed; survivors will die soon. We need about 10 wagons of prisoners more, could you boost arrests?"). dima 01:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I checked Anne Applebaum's book, page 527, for deaths in the Gulag. She puts a very approximate estimate at 2.6 million, with some 15-17 million passing through the camps. In this section she refers to the declassified Gulag documents, but points out that up to half the prisoners were not included in that definition with a wide range of forced labour projects falling under different categories. From my own degree studies in history, I know one needs to be very careful handling raw primary sources. You can't just simply say becauase this Gulag document lists 1.2 million dead, therefore that was the number that died in the camps. It's surely goes without saying that the KGB archives cannot be considered a fully trustworthy source and it's worth deferring to the peer-reviewed recognised experts in this field, particularly those with the most up to date research.

Incidentally I completely agree that it no less a tragedy if a million die than 2 million and Applebaum was very keen to stress that in the section about the cost of the camps. Each statistic is person, sure. But I think Misplaced Pages ought to be able to provide accurate numbers wherever possible.

It's not really the place for original research and so I would worry about relying on direction interpretation by editors of primary sources. That is no disrespect to those concerned, simply that professional historians who've spent years analysing that kind of source are better filters. Frustatingly it's not the case a single primary source proves anything in isolation.

Seeing as we know that the security organs of the Soviet Union have been involved in murder, torture,assasinations - you name it, they've done it, I query the assumption that we can trust them when it comes to record keeping as well. All sorts of data was falsified in the SU, economic output, harvests, the census etc. This was a system where factual, empiricism was subsevient to political ideology. Adamjamesbromley 08:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Please let's not pretend that our own system is immune from this sort of thing. That would be a severe POV error. Obviously the SU was worse, and that's why one of the reasons it fell, but we have an administration in the US now which has fudged many facts in support of an ideology. This is human nature to some degree, but in some cases it is quite deliberate. BushpigsGoneWild 08:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

No of course not. But in the West we have the benefits of more open society -more press freedom etc. It's not perfect by any means. But it does tend to uncove falsifications and misdeeds much faster than in a closed society. George Bush is at least subject to some form of scrutiny and on leaving office, even more so. Sadly no such openess exists in Russia, where you now have the ex-head of the FSB in power. Putin described the fall of the Soviet Union as 'greatest tragedy of the 20th century'. That's why I think one needs to have extra caution dealing with any information produces by closed societies. I'm really just counselling against the use of primary sources by editors, who don't have the academic background, because of the major problems associated with them. Adamjamesbromley 09:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's accurate to say modern Russia is a "closed" society. It's certainly a lot more open than China is at this point. Westerners are all over Russia these days. BTW, you cite Anne Appelbaum as though she were an objective source - she isn't. She has her own very strong POV. Putin's an autocrat - he probably misses the order of the old SU, as opposed to the uncertainty and chaos going on in Central Asia these days - but he's no Stalin. BushpigsGoneWild 14:06, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, Appelbaum is cited, but not Zemskov. Zemskov's number of total deaths in Gulag labor camps, if I remember correctly, is at around 1.6 mil, with about 1/2 of those being in three years (1933, 1942, 1943). With respect, Ko Soi IX 05:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

The Appelbaum numbers are based on precisely the same NKVD data as Zemskov. These numbers are disputed (see my comment below).Biophys (talk) 22:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

End of the Gulag?

I see the article current ends its 'History' section with the dissolution of the particular administrative entity in the late 1950's. However, I get the impression (from things like Anatoly Marchenko's My Testimony, etc) that the system was still really going concern in the 1960's, albeit with a lot less prisoners than under Stalin (particularly, a lot fewer political prisoners). Marchenko's detailed description of camp life, and the number of camps, prisons, etc make it clear that little else had changed since Stalin's day - which is why his book caused such a sensation, both in the USSR and in the West, when it came out.

Yes, the name of the organization running the camp system may have changed, but it will still much the same entity - just as the names changes from OGPU to NKVD to KGB, etc, didn't really change the nature of the security police. To me, "gulag" has always been synonomous with "Soviet penal camp system, used to hold both political and criminal prisoners", and a system of that form endured past the late 1950's. That being the case, shouldn't this article cover that later time period as well? I would say the Gulag possibly really only came to an end with Gorbachev's release of all political prisoners in 1987 - although there are clearly some people still being imprissoned today for political reasons. Noel (talk) 19:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The article is about GULAG, not about what Americans understand under the word "gulag". `'Míkka 03:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this article should be moved to GULAG then?. Also, the article has a "Latest developments" section which covers events in 1987, 27 years after GULAG was shut down. So I guess that section is in the wrong article, then?

But at the very least, if this article is only going to cover the labour camp system when it was run by GULAG, then there ought to be another article for the system after 1960 (because very little actually changed in 1960, other than the bureacratic structures; I'm pretty sure the total population in the labour camps was about the same in 1961 as it had been in 1959), and the 'History' section in this article ought to say, at the end, something like "After 1960, the labour camp system was taken over by {Foo}', so that people can easily click through and find the rest of the history of the Soviet labour camp system.

Right now, I haven't a clue where to look for it, if it's not under "Gulag", because that's the only term I've ever heard for it. This is the English-language Misplaced Pages, not the Russian one, so whatever the English-speaking world (which is more than the US, by the way) means by the generic term "Gulag" (as opposed to the specific organization GULAG) is what should be covered in the "Gulag" article. (And you can blame Solzhenitsyn for us all being confused about the term "Gulag", after his famous book!) Noel (talk) 05:02, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

No I cannot blame Solzhenitsyn, rather y'all, who mostly heard about the book but didn't actually read it. But enuf idle chat. Long time ago I suggested to start a detailed set of articles about Sovie penal labor, see Talk:Gulag/Archive#ITK, ITL, ITU, but obviously people are more interested in sensationalist topics or just adding more strongwords or millions of dead bodies for more drama, rather than to describe all systematically. `'Míkka 05:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey, it's Misplaced Pages - just do it! Sounds like a great idea for a series of articles, to me. Noel (talk) 10:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

You are probably not aware that I wrote about Stalin/Soviet repressions more wikipedia articles than the rest of you. And I will probably "just do it" as well, when I lay my hands on useful sources. `'Míkka 22:03, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

PS: Some of us actually did read "Gulag" - although I liked 'First Circle' a lot better. Noel (talk) 10:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Gen fixes = ?

Why did User:Lightmouse just unhyperlink all or most of the years & what does gen fixes mean? Thecurran 23:40, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Last line of the first section.

It reads "a further millions". I realise this is a tiny thing but I'm not sure whether it should read "a further million" or "further millions". The former seems more correct so I have changed it, if I'm wrong, please edit it back.Finewinescotland 08:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's your answer. Gatoclass 11:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Just wanted to add that the intro on this article encompasses a lot of material and should be broken down and more concise. I was reading above about someone wanting to relate Guantanamo Bay detention camp to Soviet style Gulags. The press has said this, fine, the press sensationalizes a great deal. I can see including it in an article about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp but not here. Guantanamo Bay holds al-qaeda and Taliban and thats about it. Think of the wide array of peoples from all backgrounds and ethnicities held in the gulags, not to mention the sheer numbers. There are not even 400 people detained at Guantanamo Bay currently. While abuses may occur at Guantanamo, detainees are fed about the same amount of food as US forces. How many people died of starvation at the gulags? And like someone mentioned above there are far better comparisons then Guantanamo. The camps set up due to the Malayan emergency would probably be a good choice. And there are numerous other examples of slave labor camps that would relate much better then Guantanamo. Odin1 04:13, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

NKVD massacres

Deleted as irrelevant. Thius article is about gulag. There were plenty of various killings in Soviet Union outside gulag. `'Míkka>t 19:57, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Escapes

From RDH by Clio: from in Rebellion and Escape, chapter ten of Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History. There were, in short, escapes right from the beginning, though weather and location was a factor in determining their frequency. The proximity of many of the earlier camps to Finland was an important incentive in escape attempts. In 1932 alone over 7000 inmates were recaptured trying to cross into Finland. According to the official camp statistics some 45,575 people escaped over the whole system in 1933 alone, of whom 28,370 were recaptured. In Kolyma in the far east of Siberia escapees organised themselves into gangs, stealing weapons and terrorising the local population. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Introduction

Several figures in the introduction come from newspaper articles or non-scholarly online sources. It would be best to keep to scholarly sources - of which there are plenty - to the extent possible. This is an article on one of the key (and most ghastly) institutions of the twentieth century, and should be held to a higher standard than other pages. There is plenty in journalism that will contradict (in one way or the other) any given statement on the matter; let us keep to scholarly sources. Feketekave (talk) 10:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Please provide scholarly sources or prove that the cited sources are false or not reliable. Otherwise your deletion of sourced material is invalid. `'Míkka>t 16:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

about finnish gulag victims

--87.94.158.217 (talk) 09:59, 24 June 2008 (UTC)The article says, that after the second world war, there would have been a lot of finns in Gulags. I´d like to know, what is the basis of this information? in war against soviet union, about 2500 finnish soldiers vere taken as POWs, and the territories, finland lost in peace agreement, vere evaquated of finnish population. 400000 people from those territories vere resettled to other parts of finland. I have never heard, that there would have been huge number of finnish civilians or soldiers in Gulags, and couple thousand, (half a promille) in my mind, wouldnt suffice for high figure, if there has been about 7 million other people in those camps? There was finnish speaking russians and finnish communist refugees on those camps during the purges in 1930´s, but i think, most of them were killed before second world war, and in any case, their number hasnt been very high.

Fiction book as sources?

In the Literature section I found several citations that are neither memoirs nor scientific research, for instance, Chabua Amirejibi's book is definitely a fiction. I don't think it's correct to combine scientific books, memoirs and fiction in the same list. So, if nobody minds, I'll split the Literature section onto 3 sub section, accordingly.
Best regards
--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Zemskov'd data is a reliable sourse.

To everyone why question Zemskov's data. You can find these data in the American Historical Review: Getty, Rittersporn, Zemskov. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence. The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 4. (Oct., 1993), pp. 1017-1049
Several other authors in their scholarly articles (Steven Rosefielde. Communist and Post-Communist Studies Volume 30, Issue 3, September 1997, Pages 321-331, MICHAEL ELLMAN, Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments, EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, Vol. 54, No. 7, 2002, 1151-1172, ROBERT CONQUEST. Victims of Stalinism: A Comment., EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, Vol. 49, No. 7, 1997, 1317-1319) argue about validity of some Zemskov's conclusions (criticism is generally focused on Zemskov's attempt to obtain Sovet population losses based on the Gulag population size), however, nobody dispute validity of Zemskov's data. Best regards --Paul Siebert (talk) 22:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

These Zemskov data, although used by many researchers, were disputed, for example by Antonov-Ovseenko in his book "Beria". The numbers of prisoners currently incarcerated in Gulag were produced by the NKVD/KGB itself. According to Antonov-Ovseenko (who refers to other NKVD documents), the number was actually 5 to 10 times higher, which also explains the high "turnover" of prisoners (1-2 millions per year). Soviet organizations are famous for producing bogus numbers, as supported by numerous sources. All economic production/successes data, for example were fake, and these "official" Gulag data are possibly not exception. One of problems: old Soviet military and intelligence archives are actually closed, so verification is not really possible. So, we should not represent these numbers as fact. They were actually disputed.Biophys (talk) 22:09, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Gulag prisoner mortality rate diagram (a figure) is also based on the same disputed KGB-produced data. It should be removed.Biophys (talk) 22:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, all these "data" remain guesswork, because the central NKVD/KGB archives were never really opened. The "organs" only showed a few selected documents to a few selected ("trusted") people like Zemskov. One should read the story of dissolved Ponomarev commission which tried to dig out something there (see a book by Yevgenia Albats who was a member of this commission). As soon as they published the materials about Alexius II, the commission was dissolved and the access was denied.Biophys (talk) 22:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Biophys -

I just checked the 1,533,767 figure - it's not made up; it comes from Getty-Rittersporn-Zemskov (as does the 1934 figure). It's not, however, the highest figure given there - that "honour" corresponds to 1953 (and so I've put that instead).

If we are going to comment on the change in the number of prisoners, it obviously makes a lot of sense to compare numbers from the same source. I don't know what the source of the discrepancy between GRZ and Applebaum is; perhaps Applebaum is counting resettlements or other quasi-penal arrangements outside the GULAG system strictly speaking? Feketekave (talk) 00:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

PS. Obviously, the data used by Zemskov is not "official" in the sense of having been admitted by the KGB at the time; rather - unless there has been some very major funny business - it is the data used by the KGB for its own internal purposes. One would imagine that the agency would have wanted to keep track of its own doings accurately, just with logistics in mind. It is true that access to the archives became more difficult again after a brief period of liberalisation in the late 80s/early 90s; memory may serve me ill, but I seem to recall that a coauthor of Zemskov's was bemoaning the fact. Feketekave (talk) 00:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

NKVD definitely needed to keep track of its own doings, and I see no reason for them to conceal anything in their classified documents. In contrast, Solzhenitsyn or similar writer (I cannot tell for sure) pointed out that during 1937-38 local NKVD institutions had quotae they needed to fulfill. Therefore I can imagine a situation when they needed to exaggerate the number of arrested "people's enemies" rather than to conceal. In contrast, nobody could explain me the reason for NKVD to understate these numbers in their classified documents.
Another question is the real number of Stalin's victims, that seems to be much higher than about a million of executed "people's enemies", as well as Gulag prisoners. However, that concrete article deals with the latter category only. --Paul Siebert (talk) 02:34, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Feketekave, this is very interesting. I am looking at the book by Applebaum (page 579). She is using exactly the same source as Zemskov: the "official" numbers released by the KGB. It tells 510,30 for 1934 (exactly as Zemskov, which is not surprising - they "count" every single prisoner), but 2,561,351 for 1950, 2,525,146 for 1951, 2,468,524 for 1953 and so on. These numbers were published everywhere. So, if the numbers by Zemskov are different (which page of which book it was?), it means he contradicts his own KGB/NKVD sources. Of course, major point was made by Antonov-Ovseenko who wrote that all these numbers (2,525,146 and so on) are intentional disinformation by the KGB (see cited source). If you tell it was 1,533,767 for 1953, how many it was for 1950 and 1951?Biophys (talk) 02:48, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Biophys, despite you nickname, I am starting to doubt if you are a scientist in a real life. I, for instance, never use words like lying so blatantly when I am trying to establish a truth.

I am not sure Zemskov data to be an absolute truth. However, his papers look like carefully written scholarly article, so they deserve a careful analysis, not accusations. Here is a page 1045 from his article mentioned above (I cannot put all the text here for a copyright issues):

Note on sources

The GARF (TsGAOR) collection we used was that of the GULAG, the Main Camp Administration of the NKVD/MVD (the USSR Ministry of the Interior). This collection consists of nine inventories (opisi), the first of which, that of the Secretariat, contains the main body of accessible data on detainees. To be sure, it was not possible to scrutinize the more than 3,000 files of this opis', so we restricted ourselves to those that promised to tell the most about camp populations. Accurate overall estimates of numbers of victims are difficult to make because of the fragmentary and dispersed nature of record keeping. Generally speaking, we have runs of quantitative data of several types: on arrests, formal charges and accusations, sentences, and camp populations. But these "events" took place under the jurisdiction of a bewildering variety of institutions, each with its own statistical compilations and reports. These agencies included the several organi- zations of the secret police (NKVD special tribunals, known as troikas, special collegia, or the special conference ), the procuracy, the regular police, and various types of courts and tribunals. For example, archival data on sentences for "anti-Soviet agitation" held in different archival collections may or may not have explicitly aggregated such events by the NKVD and the civilian courts. Summary data on "political" arrests or sentences may or may not explicitly tell us what specific crimes were so defined. Aggregate data on sentences sometimes include persons who were "sentenced" (to exile or banishment from certain cities) but never formally "arrested"; when we compare sentencing and arrest data, therefore, we do not always have the information necessary to sort apples from oranges. Similarly, our task is compli- cated, as shown above, by the fact that many agencies sentenced people to terms in the GULAG for many different types of crimes, which were variously defined and categorized."15 We believe, however, that despite the lack of this information, we now have enough large chunks of data to outline the parameters and to bring the areas for which we lack data within a fairly narrow range of possibility. Further research is needed to locate the origins of inconsistencies and possible errors, especially when differences are significant. We must note, however, that the accuracy of Soviet records on much less mobile populations does not seem to give much hope that we can ever clarify all the issues. For instance, the Department of Leading Party Cadres of the Central Committee furnished different figures for the total party membership and for its ethnic composition as of January 1, 1937, in two documents that were nevertheless compiled about the same time.16 Yet another number was given in published party statistics.17 The conditions of "perpetual movement" in the camp system created even greater difficulties than those posed by keeping track of supposedly disciplined party members who had just seen two major attempts to improve the bookkeeping practices of the party.1"8 At times, tens of thousands of inmates were listed in the category of "under way" in hard regime camp records," 9 although the likelihood that some of them would die before leaving jail or during the long and tortuous transportation made their departure and especially their arrival uncertain. The situation is even more complicated with labor colonies, where, at any given moment, a considerable proportion of prisoners was being sent or taken to other places of detention, where a large number of convicts served short terms, and where many people had been held pending their investigation, trial, or appeal of their sentences.120 The sources are fragmentary and scattered on colonies, but it seems that A. N. Dugin's attempt (see the Appendixes) to find figures for the beginning of each year- which was checked by V. N. Zemskov-yielded rather accurate results. Even so, we are not certain that errors have not slipped in. Moreover, we do not know at the time of this writing if camp commandants did not inflate their reports on camp populations to receive higher budgetary allocations by including people slated for transfer to other places, prisoners who were only expected to arrive, and even the dead. Conversely, they may have reported low figures in order to secure easily attainable production targets. We made extensive use of a series of statistics that were compiled about 1949 and that followed the evolution of a great number of parameters from 1934 up to 1948.121 We indicated some instances in which current periodic reports of the accounting department furnished slightly different figures from those of 1949 (see the notes to Tables 3, 4, and 6) and one case in which an NKVD document in 1936 gave data similar to but not entirely identical with those calculated after the war (note to Table 8). In these as well as in most other instances, the gaps are insignificant and do not call into question the orders of magnitude suggested by the postwar documents, whose figures are, as a rule, somewhat higher than the ones recorded in the 1930s. A notable exception concerns escapes, because a 1939 report mentioned almost twice as many fugitives for 1938 as the relevant table of 1949.122 Although we have no explanation for this discrepancy at this moment, we can speculate that the fact that a 1939 medical report showed lower mortality figures in hard regime camps in the years between 1934 and 1939 than the 1949 account may be because the latter also includes people who had been executed.123

As regards to Anne Appelbaum, my explanation is as follows.

According to Zemskov, page 1049 of the above mentioned article, by 1 January, 1953 the GULAG population was 1,727,970. At the same date, the population of colonies was 740,554.

1,727,970 (Gulag, Zemskov) + 740,554 (colonies, Zemskov) = 2,468,524 (Gulag, Appelbaum)

In other words, the discrepancy comes from combining Gulag and colony population, made by Appelbaum. Note, I don't claim Appelbaum was lying. The problem is that she seems to be not sufficiently educated to see a difference between a Gulag camp and a colony. And there is one thing I am sure about: Appelbaum, in contrast to Zemskov, didn't do her own research; she used Zemskov's data to criticize him. To my opinion, since this article is devoted to Gulag only, Zemskov's numbers should be used.

I am waiting for your comments on that account. Regards, --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:44, 3 October 2008 (UTC) P.S. And would you be so kind to but back the number of prisoners in the present day US. I think, such a comparison would be useful for the reader.

So figure for 1934 represented Camps+Colonies, but the figure for 1953 represented only Camps. But Gulag=Camps+Colonies (as in the book by Applebaum). So, the correct number of prisoners in Gulag was 2,468,524. As about Gulag and US, let's not compare apples and oranges. Death camps and modern prisons are different things.Biophys (talk) 04:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

• I expected you first to apologize for accusation of reputable researcher in a blatant lying, but you preferred to post factum edit your own comment from "it means he is lying so blatantly that he contradicts his own KGB/NKVD sources." (02:49, 3 October 2008) to "it means he contradicts his own KGB/NKVD sources. " (04:12, 3 October 2008). Since you did it after I have posted my comment and referred to your words, I cannot consider your behavior to be the best way to conduct a discussion.
• The decision to combine Gulag inmates with other prisoner or to count them separately should be made after discussion, not by you solely. I am waiting for your arguments supporting your POV.
• It is impossible to compare apples with oranges. But anybody can compare the number of apples with the number of oranges. I insist on returning the text removed by you back to the article. The reason is quite obvious. The story about NKVD crimes rests on two elephants. First elephants is: "the number of prisoners was immense", the second one is:" their sufferings were terrible". After I inserted the number of American prisoners, it became obvious that the first elephant in actuality was false: the number of Gulag prisoners (in the middle of brutal XX century) was lower than the number of prisoners today in the country that seems to be a stronghold of democracy.
  I think that by elimination of the first (false) elephant we can focus at the second, real problem: the suffering of Gulag inmates were really terrible. However, it is absolutely necessary to refute the first myth because, otherwise, it will be done by Stalin advocates who will use it as an argument to question real Stalin's crimes.
  --Paul Siebert (talk) 04:44, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, can I consider the fact that Anne Appelbaum relies on Zemskov numbers, not Antonov-Ovseenko's data, as an additional proof for validity of the former (in contrast to the latter)? In addition, can I consider your note about these numbers(according to you, These numbers were published everywhere), that are, in actuality, Zemskov's data, as your recognition of their validity?
Judging by the pages of the Antonov-Ovseenko's book available online , it is more fictional book than a scientific research. To my opinion, it should be either removed or accompanied by the explicit notion that these data are highly disputable.
Regards,
--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Apologize to whom? I guess you are not Zemskov? But let me explain. There are scientists and "scientists". People from the second category are involved in various misconduct like promoting the intentional disinformation, stealing bacterial cultures from the West for the Soviet program of biological weapons, or even testing deadly poisons on people, like Dr. Mairanovsky. Every graduate from the History department at the Moscow State University had a second "military" profession, and the official title of this profesion was "military disinformator" (this second occupation was considered a top secret). Many Soviet scientists lied. Academician Yuri Ovchinnikov published false data in a biological journals to misled his Western competitors. Academician Georgy Golitsyn promoted the "theory" of nuclear winter apparently because he was asked by the KGB. And of course some Soviet scientists blatantly lied to their military supervisers to get funding, including even such science fiction like as creation of the "seismic weapon" allegedly tested in Armenia or an accelerator of charged particles to shout US sattellites in space. So, I know what I am talking about. This is not to imply that Zemskov belongs to the "second category", I simply did not study this question. As about Applebaum, she wrote an exellent, honest and interesting book, very good research. But she relied on the official Soviet data, and we know what it is. The view of Antonoov-Ovseenko is most important because unlike Applebaum, he is not only a historian but someone who actually spend years in Gulag. So, he knows much better than her what he is writing about.Biophys (talk) 14:37, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Memoirs and fiction

Combining memoirs and fiction based on authors experiences leaves the impression that that all the books are fictional. Bobanni (talk) 14:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

The book by Antonov-Ovseenko about Beria is a solid non-fiction research, and no one ever disputed that. This is not his personal memories. Most important, he cite archive documents.Biophys (talk) 14:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

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