Galina Mikhailovna Ivanova. Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System. Trans Carol Flath. The New Russian History Series. Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe, 2000. xxiv + 208 pp. $62.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7656-0427-9.
Reviewed by Andrew A. Gentes (Department of History, Bates College)
Published on H-Russia (June, 2001)
Making Sense of the GULAG
Making Sense of the GULAG
One evening a stranger sat near the doorway of an Irkutsk tavern, drinking a Baltika and watching as a group of young people pushed back chairs and began dancing to the strains of an old-sounding melody coming from a boom-box on the counter. The babushka-proprietress came out from the kitchen, dried her hands on her apron, and leaned on the counter to watch. When one of the young women sat down across from the stranger to catch her breath, he bent forward to ask what she and her friends were dancing to. ^ÓCriminal songs,^Ô she replied. ^ÓFrom the GULAG.^Ô
The evening was in early January 1999, the stranger myself. For a moment I pondered the devushka^Òs startling answer, remembering as I did the many references by the nineteenth-century historians Maksimov and Iadrintsev to the song culture of Siberia^Òs tsarist exiles. [1] Then, after draining the rest of my beer, I asked the pretty woman with sad green eyes if she would dance with me to these ^Ócriminal songs,^Ô to this music at once so old and, especially that evening, so new and revelatory.
The back cover of Galina Mikhailovna Ivanova^Òs Labor Camp Socialism states that the ^Ólegacy [of the GULAG], transmitted throughout society and to succeeding generations by victims and perpetrators alike, burdens Russia to the present day. Thus the importance of this book.^Ô And in Ivanova^Òs own words, ^Óthe Gulag not only left deep scars on the mentality of the people who were its prisoners but had a significant effect on the psychology, behavior, way of life, and thinking of the general population as well^Ô (p. xxii). That such an influence resounds to the present day seems beyond dispute; however, as my experience in Irkutsk taught me, this influence may manifest itself in surprising ways. Although the GULAG^Òs influence on Soviet and post-Soviet society forms the raison d^Òetre of Ivanova^Òs study, she presents virtually no evidence to support her argument, buried on page 184, that GULAG personnel served as the transmission belt for this influence. Why the supposed guilt of this group becomes an idee fixe for Ivanova is explained by both this translation^Òs subtitle and the title of the original work (GULAG v sisteme totalitarnogo gosudarstva).
Whereas Western scholars on the Soviet Union have largely consigned the totalitarian paradigm to the realm of historiographical miscues, it still serves as the basis for many studies now being written in the FSU. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, the sudden disappearance of the hegemonic marxist-leninist paradigm produced a methodological vacuum. Given that most Western studies on the Soviet Union which have come to be known by FSU historians were written using the totalitarian model, it is no surprise that this more than any other model has been adopted by these historians. Second, and more significantly, adoption of the totalitarian model suggests a disturbing comparison. A number of years ago the Historikerstreit revealed certain German historians^Ò attempts not so much to analyze the origins and bases of Nazism but rather to assuage presentist concerns about guilt or complicity in acts universally recognized as the most heinous on record. If FSU historians insist on applying the totalitarian model then it is only fair that they be judged not just according to the standards which posit a direct relationship between Hitlerian Germany and Stalinist Russia, but also according to everything else implied by these same standards.
Thus it is no surprise that Ivanova in her note to English-language readers defensively claims that ^ÓThe issues of ^Ñadministrative mass murder^Ò and forced labor are somewhat abstract for the American reader, who has never suffered under totalitarianism and whose scholars are free from immediate political pressures. In Russia the situation is different^Å^Ô (p. xx). There is no doubt that (fortunately) most Americans may at best attain just an abstract understanding of the forced labor and worse to which millions of FSU citizens were subjected; similarly, they may only approximately understand the impact on those who, while avoiding the GULAG, nevertheless lived under an oppressive and terroristic regime. Yet it is for these very same reasons that one might invert Ivanova^Òs formula that American historians cannot understand as she can the history of the GULAG. One is tempted to suggest such an inversion, for it appears that Ivanova^Òs very immediacy to her topic prevents a more nuanced and^×-necessary for the historian^×-dispassionate understanding of it.
Because I don^Òt want to dwell on this issue, I will give just one example to support my point. Whereas in general Ivanova does a very good job in Chapter 3 of describing GULAG personnel based upon demographic materials, she unfortunately but tellingly characterizes guards in particular as ^Ódrunken degenerates and uneducated people who never experienced anything good in their lives.^Ô She then immediately adds, ^ÓI hope that any former guards among my readers will forgive me for such a blunt characterization, but it is based on documents and eyewitness reports^Ô (p. 149). Whereas there is substantial evidence showing alcoholism was rampant among guards and that their general educational level was quite low (the same was true of most camp personnel), Ivanova goes far beyond the evidence in making her other conclusions about their characters. Yet more significant is her mea culpa. If she is forced (perhaps literally) to be concerned about former guards^Ò reactions, might this in part explain her elision concerning former prisoners^Ò societal influence? After all, the latter represent a much larger cohort than do former guards. Moreover, does concern about anyone formerly associated with the GULAG--persons who might be friends and neighbors, the woman who works at the post office, the cobbler in the metro station--influence Ivanova^Òs objectivity as an historian? For all these reasons it is reasonable to conclude that historians at a further remove from the topic might be the ones better able to study the GULAG as an historical phenomenon.
Part of the weakness of Ivanova^Òs study is her unfamiliarity with non-Russian language studies, as made clear by both her historiographical discussion and her source base. With regard to the Introduction, in which she outlines the tsarist antecedents of the GULAG, such unfamiliarity is forgivable due to the lacuna of Western scholarship in this area. But it becomes problematic when she moves to the Soviet era, as detailed below.
Essentially, Ivanova^Òs book is divided into five sections. In her Introduction, she gives a brief account of late imperial penal practices and exile. Chapter 1, ^ÓRepression and Punishment,^Ô tries to account for the establishment of the GULAG as well as the means by which people were sent to it. Chapter 2, ^ÓThe Camp Economy,^Ô is a detailed discussion of the economic goals and the workings of this shadow economy. Chapter 3 covers ^ÓGulag Personnel^Ô and draws upon both demographic and anecdotal evidence. Finally, a brief conclusion asks ^ÓWhat Was the Gulag?^Ô These will be discussed sequentially.
Turning to Ivanova^Òs introductory discussion of the (very) late imperial period, it should be pointed out that a comprehensive study of Siberian exile prior to 1917 will hopefully soon appear.[2] There are only a few other relevant works in English.[3] Although there are a number of fine imperial-era works on this topic, they are dated in more ways than one.[4] Soviet historians wrote voluminously about tsarist exile. However, their works focus almost solely on the one percent of the exile population who were politicals and none of them analyze how the exile system actually functioned.[5] Astonishingly, Ivanova^Òs Introduction suggests that she is nearly as unfamiliar with the historical literature on this topic which exists in her own language as she is blissfully unaware of non-Russian language works in general. Indeed, whereas the first exiles were sent to Siberia in 1593, Ivanova inexplicably begins her discussion only with ^Óthe end of the nineteenth century^Ô and, of her many valuable statistics in this crucial Introduction, only one concerns the period before 1902 (pp. 4, 6).[6]
While it would certainly be unfair to expect her to delve into great detail regarding the tsarist period, what results instead is misleading on several important points. For example, she writes that ^Óthe question of outdoor work projects [for prisoners] was first raised in 1902^Å^Ô (p. 9). But from the very beginning of exile the government assigned exiles to such ^Óoutdoor work projects^Ô as salt-production and fur collection. Moreover, it was Peter the Great who invented katorga (penal hard labor) in 1696 for the purposes of building his fleets, his capital, and numerous fortresses. During the late imperial period, prisoners and katorzhnye (exiled penal laborers) were first assigned to build the Transsiberian railroad in 1891. Ivanova wrongly suggests they did not begin to work on the railroad until 1910, and then for only a few months. She also implies that work and living conditions associated with the railroad were as bad as at the mines and factories, where conditions were indeed terrible. However, archival research by myself and a more general discussion in Steven Marks^Òs book on the railroad both indicate the opposite to have been true.[7] (Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize that the Transsiberian project was the exception which rather proved the rule of tsarist katorga.) Ivanova does correctly note that the Chief Prison Administration (Glavnoe tiur^Òemnoe upravlenie--which had jurisdiction over prison and hard labor--was a branch of the Justice Ministry. However, she fails to mention that from its inception in 1879 the GTU was part of the Interior Ministry, and that was transferred to Justice only in 1896.
Ivanova is most misleading in this Introduction when she asserts that ^ÓProposals were repeatedly made in government circles to abolish the exile system, but they were never passed^Ô (p. 9). In fact, in 1900 the autocracy^Òs Murav^Òev Commission abolished most forms of exile. According to the Soviet-era historian A.D. Margolis, this resulted in an immediate 85 percent reduction in the size of the exile population.[8] Although I still agree with Ivanova^Òs contention that the tsarist penal regime set the stage for the emergence and development of the subsequent regime, the 1900 decision presents a major question as to how ineluctable this process was.
Of the three long chapters themselves, the first is the most unsatisfying. Ivanova here is pulled between needing to establish the chronological and administrative establishment of the GULAG and wanting to portray, on a case-by-case basis, the violations by which the police apparatus sent people to the camps. The result is confusion and a lack of thematic focus. There are, however, many valuable tidbits which the careful reader may discern, such as statistics demonstrating the carryover into the NEP-era of the tsarist practice of ^Óadministrative procedure,^Ô by which people were exiled without recourse to the courts, and others showing that as early as 1925 inmates were starving in what the Commissariat for Internal Affairs vaguely termed ^Óplaces of incarceration^Ô (pp.16-18).
Ivanova does a poor job of outlining the chronological development which led to the establishment of the GULAG per se and to its control by a single authority (the NKVD). Admittedly, attempting to trace any specific bureaucratic development during the Soviet era is a challenging exercise; however, Michael Jakobson has carefully articulated the origins of the GULAG in an accessible and clear manner using charts and avoiding hyperbole, and on this particular topic his book is much preferred.[9]
Soon enough in this chapter Ivanova launches into a Conquestian litany of repressive acts, some of which seem only tangentially related to the GULAG. It is here that her totalitarian paradigm most disserves her, as the only purpose for giving this evidence is to prove that the regime, and particularly Stalin, oppressed and terrorized the subject masses. Whereas one can certainly sympathize with Ivanova^Òs need to do so, one is again struck by the unalloyed victimology which informs this work and which causes the author to accept the most simplistic explanations. So it is that she writes, ^Óit would be unjust to try to find the source of tyranny among the rank-and-file or even leading officials of the judicial-repressive apparatus^Å^Ô (p. 33) and, in referring to estimates of the post-WWII GULAG population, ^Ówe will not attempt to judge the validity of these observations^Ô (p. 59).^Ô These statements get at the heart of the problem, for while Ivanova is content to evade the tasks which should be expected of any historian dealing with this topic, she nevertheless concludes this chapter by unequivocally stating: ^ÓStalin^Òs totalitarian regime ruined the lives of tens of millions of people and subjected them to terrible suffering^Ô (p. 68). If her roundabout figure includes family members of those actually sent to the camps then one might with generosity accept her claim at face value. Yet because Ivanova fails to define what she means by ^Óruined^Ô one is left guessing at what is meant here. Indeed, although she gives throughout this work several disparate figures on the GULAG population, she plays fast and loose with her numbers, often conflating statistics for the GULAG per se with those for the several other penal systems which simultaneously operated prior to the 1950s.
This question of definitive figures introduces Chapter 2, which, like the preceding, contains much valuable information but is organizationally weak and lacking in conceptualization. It is in this chapter that Ivanova startlingly asserts that ^Óin 1942,...an average of over 50,000 thousand prisoners died every month^Ô (p. 93). As with similarly high figures, Ivanova^Òs citation for this one is ambiguous at best (that is, when she cites a source at all); but if the footnote which appears a sentence later does in fact refer to this figure, then it comes from an article published in a 1991 Russian sociology journal. Given such a shocking figure, one wishes for a more immediate source than this. In their landmark 1993 article in the American Historical Review J. Arch Getty et al. confirm that 1942 was the deadliest year for GULAG inmates; however their figure, based on archival sources, is less than half that of Ivanova^Òs implied 600,000.[10]
In order to inflate numbers beyond what the archives allow for the GULAG, Ivanova resorts to adding figures for other penal constellations. Thus she writes, ^ÓAs of January 1 1949, the MVD [Internal Ministry] system included^Å [various camps, divisions, facilities] and 1,734 colonies containing [a total of] 2,356,685 prisoners^Å^Ô (p. 98). In a wholly disingenuous manner Ivanova here includes under the term ^Óprisoners^Ô thousands of persons elsewhere described as ^Óspecial settlers^Ô and ^Ófree workers^Ô (p. 76).[11] In marked disregard to the purported topic of the book (i.e., the GULAG), Ivanova^Òs tendency throughout to mix and match statistics and to switch back and forth between various administrations that were actually quite distinct from each other results in a narrative as confusing as it is at times revealing. Although there can be no doubt that those technically outside the GULAG regime but still beneath the enormous umbrella of the MVD were abused and died, even if they were nominally ^Ófree,^Ô the reader deserves a more candid approach than that demonstrated here.[12]
Nonetheless, to her credit Ivanova successfully portrays the nuances of the GULAG economy. For example she admits that ^ÓIt cannot be said that the MVD staff was completely indifferent to the quality of life of the prisoners^Ô (p. 121). Similarly, she describes how, ^ÓIn some branches of industry, prisoners participated in campaigns to improve production methods^Ô (p. 109). For this reader, who ^Ógrew up^Ô on GULAG horror stories, this was the most novel material in the author^Òs book: that amid all the starvation, terror, and death a bizarre kind of community existed, welding together both oppressors and oppressed in a common cause--service to the state.
In Chapter 3 Ivanova expands upon this theme in her discussion of GULAG personnel. It is here that she comes closest to achieving the kind of social history her archival research promises. Without explicitly referring to Roll, Jordan, Roll, in which Eugene Genovese put forth a daring model suggesting that in many cases American slaveowners and slaves experienced mutually reciprocal emotional attachments, Ivanova, drawing upon the history of slavery in general, posits that within the GULAG there existed a similar form of ^Ópatriarchal slavery^Ô (p. 151). Thus she notes that ^ÓA tradition of cooperation between Chekists and skilled prisoners took shape during the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Later many camp managers emulated this model in other camps as well^Ô (p. 151).
Yet while detailing the many ways in which certain GULAG and other Soviet prisoners, especially if they were specialists, received pay, good food, and housing as incentives to cooperate with their oppressors, Ivanova in this final chapter is more concerned to demonstrate that GULAG employees^Ò monstrous behavior not only reflected their own personal backgrounds but, most importantly, was somehow transferred to the general society. To make this first point she does, as have others before her, note those too-numerous instances when guards beat, raped, and murdered prisoners. But she also breaks new ground by showing in-depth how guards and other personnel were little more than prisoners themselves, forced to live on meager rations, to work 12 and 14-hour days, and to live in housing little better than the barracks to which prisoners were assigned. Indeed, it was for these reasons as well as low pay that the GULAG apparatus was chronically understaffed during the entire period of its existence.
But it is this very combination of understaffing and high turnover among GULAG employees, in addition to avoiding any discussion of the role of prisoners, which together undermine Ivanova^Òs argument that the GULAG came to influence contemporary Soviet society in such a way that the effects are felt today. I think the GULAG did have a profound influence, but not for the reasons Ivanova suggests. The linchpin of her argument is that ^ÓOver a million Soviet citizens worked in the Gulag during the years of its existence^Ô (p. 184); however, by her own account, few remained in their positions very long before either the conditions described above or self-disgust at what they were during compelled them to leave. Ironically, the fact that so many employees did quit suggests the camps might actually have had the opposite effect on these people than that suggested by Ivanova, that instead of developing disregard for other human beings they developed greater sympathy toward them.
But more importantly, the figure of one million personnel pales in comparison to the number of people who were victimized by the GULAG and associated penal regimes. How many people did in fact experience the camps is, as Ivanova admits, difficult to determine. But even though archival evidence suggests her estimate of 20 million for the period from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s is far too high, [13] the actual number still grossly outweighs that for the personnel upon whom Ivanova places the blame for introducing to ^Ónormal^Ô society the destructive forces of the archipelagic camps and colonies. It is for this reason alone that in seeking to understand the impact the GULAG had and continues to have we should be looking primarily at the role(s) played by the victims.
One might object that many of those who entered the camps never lived long enough to return to society. This is absolutely true; though again, archival figures suggest that the number executed both inside and outside the GULAG, or who died of other causes in the camps, is much lower than the estimates arrived at by Conquest, Medvedev, and others.[14] Therefore, in seeking to understand the wider impact of the GULAG we are dealing with smaller numbers of inmates than traditionally thought, yet nonetheless with people who were ravaged both psychologically and physically by their experiences.
Because all prisoners shared in this suffering it is in one sense unnecessary to point out that less than a third of those sent to the GULAG were sentenced for ^Ócounterrevolutionary crimes.^Ô However, this distinction is important because it has led scholars to traditionally focus only on politicals. To a slightly lesser extent than some, Ivanova maintains this focus. Hence there still remains the need to understand the non-politicals better than we do. Whereas those in this larger group were, juridically speaking, ^Ó(common) criminals^Ô (ugolovnye), a more precise analysis will hopefully allow us to separate, for example, peasants guilty of nothing more than hiding grain from those who were murderers, rapists, and thieves--those ^Ózeks^Ô so memorably described by Solzhenitsyn, Ginzburg, Dolgun, and others.[15]
The regime punished its violent criminal class using primarily the GULAG--which is to emphasize the often overlooked fact that in addition to being a tool for political oppression, the GULAG sufficed for a network of more standard prisons modeled along the American (or Pennsylvania) system. This fact alone highlights the remarkable continuity with tsarist penology. The modern prison (based, incidentally, upon Quaker philosophy) is less than two hundred years old, whereas Siberian exile began during the reign of Tsar Fedor I. Thus we are not simply dealing here with an oppressive system but with a deeply ingrained and fundamentally different penology. It is largely because of this penology that Russian prisoners today suffer as they do.[16]
As recent studies have shown, it was the professional criminal element which accounted for most of the prisoners who escaped from the GULAG throughout its existence, as well as those large numbers who began to be released from the camps in 1953. Why persons guilty of violent crimes were let out after Stalin^Òs death remains something of a mystery, but it is clear they inaugurated a crimewave which in certain respects has never ended.[17] I would argue that this, in tandem with the psychological devastation wrought on survivors and family members, both signify the most profound impact the GULAG had on Soviet society. Yet Ivanova chooses to address none of these issues.
As becomes fully apparent from the conclusion, Ivanova^Òs argument ultimately devolves upon the remarkably banal observation that Stalin was personally responsible and that he and his regime were evil. Yes. Such an observation is understandable in a work of this nature. But with regard to the GULAG at least, the evil with which Ivanova concerns herself has been elsewhere much more eloquently expressed, from the Tolstoyan onslaught of Solzhenitsyn^Òs Gulag Archipelago to the heart-piercing brilliance of Shalamov^Òs Chekhovian vignettes in Kolyma Tales, and in numerous lesser works which fall somewhere in-between these poles. Yet for the historian it is necessary at some point to move beyond good and evil so as to be able to analyze with accuracy the causes and workings of a system so utterly capable as was the GULAG of facilitating some of the worst atrocities ever known. Ivanova^Òs refusal to properly account for contrary evidence, her wanton blurring of detail and conflating of statistics, and her frequent relapses into rhetoric and polemicism signify a retreat rather than an advance in this direction.
Notes
[1]. See e.g., S.V. Maksimov, Sibir´ i katorga, 3rd ed. (S.-Peterburg: Izdanie V.I. Gubinskago, 1900), 1, 104; N.M. Iadrintsev, Russkaia obshchina v tiur´me i ssylke (S.-Peterburg: Tipografiia A. Morigerovskago, 1872), 400.
[2]. The reviewer remains a student of Brown University and is finalizing a dissertation for the history department there currently entitled "Road to Oblivion: Siberian Exile and the Struggle between State and Society in Russia, 1593-1917." Unless otherwise noted, comments below concerning tsarist exile are all based on the sources used in my dissertation.
[3]. George Kennan^Òs book is generally well-known, and there exist other nineteenth-century English-language sources which, however, are not nearly as useful. As regards more recent scholarly work, the British historian Alan Wood has written several articles which serve as useful introductions to the topic of tsarist exile. Among the best is ^ÓSex and Violence in Siberia: Aspects of the Tsarist Exile System,^Ô in John Massey Stewart and Alan Wood, Siberia: Two Historical Perspectives (London: The Great Britain-USSR Association and The School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1984), 23-42. Jonathan Daly has recently published an article on tsarist penal practices, though with regards to exile and penal labor I consider his conclusions problematic. See Jonathan W. Daly, ^ÓCriminal Punishment and Europeanization in Late Imperial Russia,^Ô Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 47 (2000): 341-62. While he deals with neither the exile system nor its functioning per se, on the more general theme of tsarist penology Bruce Adams^Òs recent study is required reading. See Bruce F. Adams, The Politics of Punishment: Prison Reform in Russia, 1863-1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 1996).
[4]. In addition to the two works already cited, see Ssylka v Sibir´: ocherk eia istorii i sovremennago polozheniia (S.-Peterburg: Tipografiia S.-Peterburgskoi Tiur´my, 1900); G.S. Fel^Òdstein, Ssylka: eia genezisa, znacheniia, istorii i sovremennogo sostoianiia (Moskva: T-vo skoropechatni A.A. Levenson, 1893); N.M. Iadrintsev, Sibir^Ò kak koloniia: k iubileiu trekhsotletiia. Sovremennoe polozhenie Sibiri. Eia nuzhdy i potrebnosti. Eia proshloe i budushchee (Sanktpeterburg: Tipografiia M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1882) [republished a decade later with a slightly different title].
[5]. This is a large body of literature, though a demonstrative publication would be L.M. Goriushkin, et al., eds., Ssylka i katorga v Sibiri (XVIII-nachalo XX v.) (Novosibirsk: ^ÓNauka,^Ô 1975).
[6]. It concerns the number executed by military courts from 1875 to 1908.
[7]. Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850-1917 (Ithaca: Cornell, 1991), 179ff.
[8]. A.D. Margolis, Tiur^Òma i ssylka v imperatorskoi Rossii: issledovaniia i arkhivnye nakhodki (Moskva: Lanterna Vita, 1995), 25. Margolis^Òs chapter on this topic was first published as idem, ^ÓSistema sibirskoi ssylki i zakon ot 12 iiunia 1900 goda^Ô, in L.M. Goriushkin, et al., eds. Ssylka i obshchestvenno-politicheskaia zhizn^Ò v Sibiri (XVIII^×nachalo XXv.) (Izdatel^Òstvo ^ÓNauka^Ô: Novosibirsk, 1978), 126-140.
[9]. Michael Jakobson, Origins of the GULAG: The Soviet Prison Camp System, 1917-1934 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993).
[10]. J. Arch Getty, Gabor T. Rittersporn, Viktor N. Zemskov, ^ÓVictims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence,^Ô American Historical Review 98, no. 4 (Oct. 1993): Figure D, p. 1042.
[11]. Elsewhere Ivanova writes of the early fifties that ^ÓIn dealing with the growing shortage of workers, the MVD resorted more and more often to free laborers, most of whom were former prisoners^Ô (123).
[12]. For the 1949 GULAG population see Getty, et al., AHR: Figure D, p. 1042.
[13]. For figures during the Stalin regime, cf. Ibid.: Table 1, p. 1022.
[14]. These estimates are tabulated in Ibid.
[15]. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956; an experiment in literary investigation, I-VII, 3 vols. (New York, Harper & Row, 1974-1976); Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1967); Alexander Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun^Òs Story (New York: Knopf, 1975).
[16]. In a sense, Russian penology could be termed ^Ópre-modern.^Ô Cf. Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979).
[17]. Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945-1957 (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 165-66. Escapes were quite frequent prior to WWII. Getty, et al., AHR, Figure D, p. 1042.
Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-russia.
Citation:
Andrew A. Gentes. Review of Ivanova, Galina Mikhailovna, Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System.
H-Russia, H-Net Reviews.
June, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5204
Copyright © 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.