<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: [lbo-talk] Gulag query</title></head><body> <blockquote type="cite" cite> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">From: "Chris Doss" <itschris13@hotmail.com><br> <br> <br> I just read that during the worst years of Stalin only 2.5% of the Soviet</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">population was in prison. This CAN'T be true, can it?</font></blockquote> </blockquote> <div><font face="Arial" size="-1"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="-1">Your stay in the GULAG could be short for one of two reasons, remember.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="-1"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="-1">What's the current guess of deaths during the collectivization of agriculture? 5 million? What proportion of the 5 million "displaced persons" returned to the Soviet Union after World War II ever made it home? Half?</font> Perhaps 1 million shot by the NKVD during the Great Terror itself who never made it to the GULAG.</div> <div><br></div> <div>I do remember being struck that *both* of Gorbachev's grandparents were arrested during the 1930s (although both survived): his paternal grandfather for failing to meet production targets, and his maternal grandfather for being a right-wing Trotskyist. Stalin was much harder on Communists than on peasants and workers, and the closer you got to Stalin, the lower your chances of surviving became...</div> <div><font face="Arial" size="-1"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="-1"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="-1">Brad DeLong</font></div> </body> </html>