How regions near Stalin’s gulag benefit today from his victims
Educated political prisoners settled near their jails and passed on their human capital to their children
“T HE BEDBUGS infested the board bunks like locusts...in autumn the typhus arrived...We crawled to the fence and begged: ‘Give us medicine.’ And the guards fired a volley from the watchtowers.” In “The Gulag Archipelago” Alexander Solzhenitsyn chronicled the soul-crushing torment of Soviet prisoners. Jailed for criticising the government, Solzhenitsyn was one of the 2.65m people in 1921-59 arrested for “counter-revolutionary activities” and labelled “enemies of the people” (EOTP).
This article appeared in the Graphic detail section of the print edition under the headline "“Levelling up” at gunpoint"
From the December 2nd 2021 edition
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