Oh yes, my friend, I knew someone would repeat me this soviet narrative. I urge you to read about Mr. Jones or watch a film about these events. Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis. They also claimed it was just for labor, you know. I see you are well prepared with communist materials, it’s the same as entering communist class in the Soviet Union and expecting they will share the truth.

[–] MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis.

From a researcher who actually examined Soviet archives after the fall of the USSR in the 90s (PDF link, see pg. 1041):

Even in the terrible year of 1937, 44.4 percent of the GULAG labor camp population on January 1 was freed during the course of the year.

These weren't death camps, these were prisons. You can read elsewhere in the same article about how most of the people in them had been convicted of non-political crimes every country in the world prosecutes. Just like in many other countries, people would serve their sentence and be released.

The article also notes how the vast majority of mortality in the Soviet prison system was attributable to the hardships imposed by WWII (also from pg. 1041):

More than half of all GULAG deaths in the entire 1934-1953 period occurred in 1941-1943, mostly from malnutrition.

Comparing this to the Nazi system that was directly designed to exterminate people is no more than roundabout Nazi apologia.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I urge you to read about Mr. Jones

There have been millions of Mr. Joneses so you’ll need to be more specific. In the meantime,

Domenico Losurdo, 2008, Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend
Grover Furr, 2014, Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands Is False

Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis.

I see you are well prepared with communist materials, it’s the same as entering communist class in the Soviet Union and expecting they will share the truth.

Those aren’t arguments, they’re vague, empty rhetoric.

[–] AnarchoBolshevik@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 53 minutes ago

They mean Gareth Jones.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

No, now you're doing holocaust minimization by supporting Double Genocide Theory. Read Blackshirts and Reds.

[–] AnarchoBolshevik@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

Gareth Jones pointed to excessive grain appropriations and the “export of foodstuffs” by Soviet authorities as a cause but that it was “not so much the Soviet Government as the world crisis, which is to blame.”

Read Blackshirts and Reds.

Yeah, good luck convincing one anticommunist to read any of Michael Parenti’s books. You’ll have an easier time pulling teeth.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 54 minutes ago

To be fair, I have done it at least twice on Lemmy. Maybe I should go into dentistry instead, though, lol