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V O LU M E 2 N U M B E R 1
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A Q U A R T E R LY M E S S A G E O N L I B E R T Y
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C A T O S L E T T E R
V O LU M E 2 N U M B E R 1
Letter
were known only to a small proportion
of the population. On the contrary,
they were central to the entire
Soviet system.
We also understand better the
chronology of the camps. We have
to a
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explain why Stalin chose to expand them individuals (holiday card list, etc.) in
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attempt, in both human lives and natural
resources, to force a 20 percent annual
increase in the Soviet Unions industrial
output and to collectivize agriculture. barrack, a stove with a chimney, and
The plan led to millions of arrests as somehow they survive.
peasants were forced off their land; they None of which is to say that the camps
were imprisoned if they refused to leave. were not also intended to terrorize and
It also led to an enormous labor shortage. subjugate the population. Certainly,
Suddenly, the Soviet Union found itself prison and camp regimes, which were
in need of coal, gas, and minerals, most of dictated in minute detail by Moscow,
which were found only in the far north of were openly designed to humiliate pris-
the country. The decision was made: oners. The prisoners belts, buttons,
prisoners should be used to extract the garters, and items of elastic were taken
minerals. away from them. The guards described
To the secret policemen who were them as enemies and forbade them to
charged with carrying out the construc- use the word comrade, even with each
tion of the camps, it all made sense. Here other. Such measures contributed to the 3
is how Alexi Laginov, former deputy dehumanization of prisoners in the eyes
commander of the Norilsk camps, north of camp guards and bureaucrats, who
of the Arctic Circle, justified the use of therefore found it that much easier not to
prisoner labor in a 1992 interview: treat them as fellow citizens or even as
If we had sent civilians, we would human beings. In fact, this proved to be
first have had to build houses for an extremely powerful ideological combi-
them to live in. And how could ordi- nation the disregard of the humanity
nary people live here? With pris- and individuality of prisoners and the
oners, it is easy. All you need is a overwhelming need to fulfill the centrally
determined plan.
STALINS BORING MURDERS European communism as the logical
One of the reasons I wrote my book was result of a particular set of circumstances.
because I started to wonder why I encoun- The passage of time is part of it: Com-
tered this subject only while living in East- munist regimes really did grow less repre-
ern Europe. I have a degree in Russian hensible as the years went by. Nobody
history from Yale University, and yet I was very frightened of General Jaruzelski,
knew very few of these details. I was also or even of Brezhnev, although both were
inspired, I have to admit, by an extremely responsible for a great deal of destruction.
irritating New York Times review of my first Besides, archives were closed. Access to
book, Between East and West: Across the Bor- the sites of the camps was forbidden. No
derlands of Europe, which was about the television cameras ever filmed the Soviet
western borderlands of the former Soviet camps or their victims, as they had done
Union. Although largely positive, the in Germany at the end of World War II.
review contained the following line: Here No images, in turn, meant that the sub-
occurred the terror famine of the 1930s, in ject, in our image-driven culture, didnt
which Stalin killed more Ukrainians than really exist either.
Hitler murdered Jews. Yet, how many in Ideology twisted the ways in which we
the West remember it? After all, the killing understood Soviet and East European
was so boring and ostensibly undramatic. history as well. In the 1920s Westerners
Were Stalins murders boring? Many knew a great deal about the bloodiness of
people think so. The crimes of Stalin do Lenins revolution and the camps that he
not inspire the same visceral reaction in was just then beginning to set up. West-
the Western public as do the crimes of ern socialists, many of whose brethren
Hitler. Ken Livingstone, a former mem- were among the first victims of the Bol-
ber of Parliament and now the mayor of sheviks, protested loudly, strongly, and
London, once spent an entire evening frequently against the crimes then being
trying to explain the difference to me. committed by the Bolshevik regime.
Yes, he said, the Nazis were evil. But
the Soviet Union was deformed. That
view echoes the feeling of many people,
even people who are not old-fashioned
members of the British Labour
4
Party. The Soviet Union went
wrong somehow, but it was Leave a
not fundamentally wrong
in the same way as
Legacy of
Hitlers Germany.
V O LU M E 2 N U M B E R 1
the Gulag, some of what we know about nature. I wrote my book about the Gulag
mankind itself will be distorted. Every one not "so that it will not happen again," as
of the 20th centurys mass tragedies was the clich has it, but because it will hap-
unique: the Gulag, the Holocaust, the pen again. We need to know whyand
Armenian massacre, the Nanking mas- each story, each memoir, each document
sacre, the Cultural Revolution, the Cam- is a piece of the puzzle. Without them,
bodian revolution, the Bosnian wars. we will wake up one day and realize that
6 Every one of those events had different we do not know who we are.
historical and philosophical origins and
arose in circumstances that will never be
C A T O S L E T T E R
V O LU M E 2 N U M B E R 1
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