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  1. #26
    Chieftain of the Pudding Race Member Evil_Maniac From Mars's Avatar
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    Default Re: Discussion of Stalinism

    Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian View Post
    Now, tell me how could possibly any of the pre-1990's research accurately assess how many gulags there were, where they were, how many people were in them and how many died in them?
    Eyewitness accounts (from thousands of different people), accessible records, intelligence reports...the list really goes on and on and on.

    Don't tell me they just know because that's precisely what I'm arguing - they don't know and there was no possible way for them to know. Based on what information they had they could only make a guess. An educated guess perhaps, but a guess nevertheless.
    This has truth and untruth. Yes, the best they could do would be an educated guess - but this could come very, very close. I don't think you can get a closer figure by using the archives as your primary source, as you suggest.

    Furthermore, how is it possible for them to know how many people in the Gulags were innocent? Not only political prisoners were sent to Siberia, criminals got sent there, too.
    This falls under cruel and unusual punishment then, and remains a crime against humanity.

    For example, during the WW2, there were tens of thousands of Russian fighting in the German army.
    Tens of thousands is, with all due respect to the victims, a drop in the ocean against the forty million or so murdered by Stalin. I don't deny that there is some room for error - but not much.

    It's impossible for archives to contain every bit of information about everything, true, but generally they contain a lot, even the "embarrassing" bits. That's probably the reason why UK and US archives aren't opened to the public still. Actually, I know they weren't a couple of years ago, maybe that changed in the meantime. Anyway, not really the point. I'm willing to accept that Russian archives may not be complete or 100% accurate, but they still seem much more sensible starting point for any research than research conducted 20-80 years ago from 10,000 km away.
    Firstly, you're presuming that all research was conducted with no Russian sources - an presumption which is inaccurate, as stated below. Russian archives have, undoubtedly, been used - and the only information I can find on them in regard to death tolls is them telling us about people (specifically Americans) who we didn't even know had died in the Soviet Union (thereby very slightly increasing the toll). As well, I think it is quite safe to assume that the archives of Western countries are in a much better state than the Russian ones. Some countries have much more reliable archives than others, as Ms. Applebaum so eloquently stated.

    What I don't understand is why you're considering NATO countries as totally guiltless of the same. Why is every western source automatically considered 100% accurate and free of bias, nationalism and similar stuff?
    It isn't - but you're dismissing it all as Western. There is plenty of work by Russians on the subject from the same timeframe, including from Russians who had gone through the Gulags.

    That's why I'm asking all these questions. Why are western sources considered perfect just because they are western when they come from a period when there was mutual bias, fear and even paranoia?
    Shockingly to you, perhaps, the first real accounts of the Gulags, for example, were not Western sources. They were Russians, Ukranians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Cossacks, and Mongols. Solzhenitsyn is the first name that springs to mind in this - it was he who truly opened the Gulag story to the West, and he was a Russian if I ever saw one.

    How it was possible to conduct serious scholarly work in the USSR back then?
    I think you may have just proven my point with that line.

    Why isn't new research conducted? If I tried to research the issue now, the first thing I'd do is head to Russia, instead of relying on papers written in 50's. Starting from the archives, trying to find as many as possible live people and question them directly. There's bound to be a good number of them. IIRC, just last year the last Serbian soldier involved in the breakthrough of the Macedonian Front in the WW1 died. Try to get my hands on as many documents from the Gulags as I can. Visit and check them out directly etc...
    People have conducted plenty of new research, using old and new things that have been uncovered and examing their correlations. Have you read Anne Applebaum? Specifically Gulag: A History? She has studied extensively on the subject, and is fluent in Russian. She has viewed Russian sources firsthand.
    Last edited by Evil_Maniac From Mars; 03-13-2009 at 20:51.

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