Haunting message penned from Soviet 'slaves' found buried in Urals theatre

http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0241-haunting-message-penned-in-nail-polish-from-soviet-slaves-found-buried-in-urals-theatre/

by Thevet • 11 years ago

106 66 11 years ago

siberiantimes.com

gyardley2• 11 years ago

I can't for the life of me figure out why the headline writer put the word 'slaves' in quotes.

sologoub• 11 years ago

Probably because they were technically convicts from governments point of view, instead of outright slaves or someones property.

I'm a bit surprised by 1954 as the date, since it's pretty far from the original purges in the 30s, but not at all surprised by the find. The disappearances and summary judgements, resulting in either executions or the slow rot of the labor camps, are well documented.

A person I know from that same town found a German gun folded in oiled cloth in his parents' ceiling when he was renovating. The building was built by German POWs.

CWuestefeld4• 11 years ago

they were technically convicts from governments point of view

This isn't entirely true. The work camps were powered by convicts, but also by putatively free exiles who had been sent there for a variety of reasons. And in some cases, convicts who had completed their sentences were technically freed, but not allowed to leave the camps anyway.

Source: I'm currently reading "Gulag: A History" by Anne Applebaum. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224379.Gulag

gcv• 11 years ago

A huge number of soldiers returning from the war had been handed 25-year (in most cases equivalent to life-long) sentences under the 58th article of the Soviet penal code (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58_(RSFSR_Penal_Code) — the Soviet Union officially had no political prisoners, only criminals). For the most part, their crime was contact with other Allied troops, so it was easy to accuse them of contact with the West, and eliminate any dangerous ideas they could have brought into the bright nation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the heaven of the working man. These people would have been serving their sentences through the 1950s, and Khruschev's rehabilitation policies (far from popular in the Politburo) did not start until 1956.

eveningcoffee• 11 years ago

They deported loads of people from occupied territories after end of war and releasing them only started around that time.

M8• 11 years ago

Because they were prisoners?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_State...

cushychicken2• 11 years ago

And what, apart from legal approval, is morally or materially different about forcing a prisoner to work and forcing a free citizen to work?

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

Prisoners have been one of the most common types of slaves in history. And one of the few explicitly tolerated as such in places that like to claim they've abolished slavery. [0]

[0] See, e.g., US Constitution, Amendment XIII

jader201• 11 years ago

The article seems to refer to them as "prisoners" more often than "slaves", so this may be why (and the article is more sensational using "slaves" in the title vs. "prisoners").

unics• 11 years ago

I understand that it can be subjective and will assume the writers audience might find the context sensitive. In this case it seems to fit well in my opinion.

topynate• 11 years ago

I understand your sentiment completely – they were slaves and that crime should be recognised. The reason the headline has the word in quotes is that it's quoting their own statement about themselves: quote quotes, not scare quotes.

jvm• 11 years ago

My guess it that the word "slavery" usually implies chattel slavery, whereas these people were serving sentences of penal servitude.

Others have pointed this out, but penal servitude is alive and well in the US prison system as well [1] and it's not common to use the word slavery for that. Maybe they should, but it is arguably a different concept from chattel slavery.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_State...

meatysnapper• 11 years ago

Hooray prison-industrial complex :(

chc• 11 years ago

I think that's because it's literally quoting the letter-writers' description of themselves.

mempko4• 11 years ago

Is this a good time to talk about the US prison labour system we have now? Where many are forced to work. I guess if you give them pennies on the dollar, they are not slaves right?

EDIT: Judging from the down votes, I guess it is not a good time. Maybe tomorrow?

mhurron• 11 years ago

Yes, every story should be made to be about the US. It's really the only place that matters.

Oh and FYI, slavery for punishment is legal in the US.

humanrebar• 11 years ago

Well, not chattel slavery, which is what Americans usually mean by the term.

The prison can't sell prisoners like you could sell a car or something.

mempko4• 11 years ago

Actually this is one of the most appropriate stories to mention the US. US has the most prisoners in the world and the Russian prison slaves wished a world where there would be no slavery. That world is not here yet.

mikeash• 11 years ago

No, this is not a good time to talk about the US prison labor system. If you have an interesting link about that topic, submit it and maybe it'll get upvoted. But don't just find a topic that's vaguely similar and hijack it.

mempko4• 11 years ago

Good idea! Here you go https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9653515

badloginagain• 11 years ago

I think it's valid to take a discovery of human slavery in the past and compare it to slavery in the present. Be it mines using forced labor, sexual slavery, forced prison work, etc.

Hijacking? It's seems a natural on-topic comment to me.

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

It is the closest he can get to saying America does this too, without looking like a total jackass.

kremlin• 11 years ago

The letter in the article says, "Hello, future generation! And may your era have no slavery and no humiliation of man by man."

We are the future generation, and there is in fact prison slave labour now. It's directly on topic.

dsp12345• 11 years ago

The 13th amendment to the US Constitution, which generally abolished slavery, specifically allows for slavery or involuntary servitude in the case of conviction. It is very explicit in saying so.[0]

"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." [emphasis mine]

So yes, involuntary servitude in prison systems is specifically allowed under the US Constitution, and you could even refer to US prisoners as slaves, and that would still be allowed.

Please note this is not a judgement on whether it should be this way or not, just that the US constitution specifically allows this occur.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni...

tptacek8• 11 years ago

The disciplinary reaction to refusing prison work is also not comparable to the Soviet penal system. In the US prisons that have forced labor, refusal to work will cost privileges and good-behavior time. In the Soviet system, refusal to work would cost your life.

ljf• 11 years ago

I think that the difference between the mindset of the American penal system (from a British point of view) seems to be that in America you are in prison FOR punishment. There seems to be an expectation that in prison you should endure additional hardship in the form of work and potentially rape (the USA is the only country in the world with a higher level of _reported_ male rape than female rape, due to the large number of prisoners and the abuse that occurs in there).

In the UK and Europe we see prison as THE punishment. Being deprived of your liberty and freedom is generally considered punishment enough. Some of the most successful prisons (in terms of re-offender rates) are in Denmark, where prisons are pretty damn comfortable and prisoners have many rights and access to support (and even the ability to leave the prison for periods of the day if they are trusted and to mix with prisoners of the opposite sex and civilians who choose to live in boarding available in prisons.

mempko4• 11 years ago

Thank you sir! :-)

ajuc2• 11 years ago

The difference is - in USA it's uncommon for the prisoner to die of cold and starvation.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

True, they are much more likely to die in a fight instigated by, and for the entertainment of, their jailers than by cold or starvation.

tptacek8• 11 years ago

US prison labor isn't usefully comparable to Soviet slave labor.

It was also not helpful of you to post a story from 2010 about a Georgia prison strike in response to this article (and I'm a little surprised it got upvoted so much before being flagged off the front page):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9653515

MrZongle2• 11 years ago

When the warts of Russian history are being discussed, you'd be surprised what aspects of American culture (present or past) are suddenly considered comparable.

CWuestefeld4• 11 years ago

The labor performed by prisoners of the US prison system isn't comparable, you're right. But given that the US imprisons at a vastly higher rate than the rest of the world, and:

Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. [1]

That, I think, is a useful comparison, and one that we should be making and asking questions about.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/the-caging-of-a...

tjradcliffe• 11 years ago

The responses here show a depressing ignorance of the Soviet era, which was a time of massive industrialization using a system of forced labour. Western apologists for Stalinism continued to tout the "success" of this project right up to the fall of the Soviet Union.

It is good we are still able to hear the voices of the dead from the Gulag, not just to be reminded of who they were and how they died as a result of deliberate Soviet policy, but to be reminded of how badly misunderstood and misremembered the horrors of that policy are.

If the US prison system deliberately killed millions of people over decades by systematic intent to create industrial infrastructure in a nation previously dominated by peasant farming it would be comparable. Otherwise, not so much.

That the Soviet system deliberately killed millions of people over decades is not in dispute. The purpose of the Gulag is well-documented. But there are as always Denialists who will believe what they want and claim anything they think is remotely plausible to justify it.

http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-Abridged-Experiment-...

rorykoehler• 11 years ago

Clearly it creates a potential conflict of interest. Prisoners should get paid at least minimum wage. The money could be put into a savings account for them for when they are released. This coupled with financial management lessons could have an positive impact on the high rates of recidivism the system experiences.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

but it isn't true. Only a very small percentage of the prison population works at any task, one of the primary reasons for such a low percentage; like under ten percent; is security. The majority reason is that prisons switched from rehabilitation to punishment and punishment usually means having nothing to do. First off its easier to implement and second its actually cheaper.

What worse is that when getting out the states themselves if not the federal government put many onerous barriers that prevent if not downright discourage employing former prisoners and those on probation. There are many jobs which require certification by government through regulation that explicit exclude felons.

The true issue is we have a system which does little to prevent repeat offenders because the government's own regulations put up too many barriers to employment after prison.

user_0001• 11 years ago

Careful, Russia has slaves. The US has prisoners (most likely to be descendants of actual, real slaves from a few generations back)

Russia is coming back at the main bogey man, don't you read the news?

;-)

gyardley2• 11 years ago

In my opinion, you're directionally right about the United States' penal system. Maybe prisoners in the United States can refuse work, and refusing work won't get them shot, but yes - the United States' penal system is most certainly a god-awful mess, and I say this from the depths of my conservative right-wing heart.

That being said, there's a certain type of dishonest argument called a tu quoque - pointing at hypocrisy. It's often used to derail criticism of some terrible thing by saying 'oh, hey, you do it too', diverting the discussion to a debate about that.

With regards to the Soviet Union, the tu quoque has a special history, because they used it incredibly consistently throughout their history. The phrase 'А у вас негров линчуют' - roughly, 'but in your country, they lynch black people' - was used so often by Soviet politicians it became the punchline to popular jokes about food shortages and human rights violations.

That's probably why you were being downvoted - because, completely aside from the rightness or wrongness of your statement, comparison of the happily-gone Soviet Union to the current United States was seen as an attempt to move the conversation away from the awfulness of the Soviet Union's forced labor programs and these slaves' desire to communicate with future generations.

ars2• 11 years ago

I'm personally not a great fan on prison as a punishment. Forcing them to work as a punishment (obviously for much much less time than an equivalent prison sentence) sounds MUCH better to me.

Prison takes away time which is the only thing a person can never get back, it should be reserved for people who are a danger to others.

Punishment should be actual punishment, corporal, work, that kind of thing. Something that a person will not like, but after they are done, they will hopefully be able to rejoin society with memories of what happens if they offend again.

mattgibson• 11 years ago

I wonder if in years to come, there will be similar stories when messages from enslaved foreign tech workers are found buried in leaked source code.

knodi123• 11 years ago

probably not.

staunch• 11 years ago

Hello, future generation! And may your era have no slavery and no humiliation of man by man. Cheers from us, Prisoners I.L.Kozhin, P.G.Sharipov, U.N.Nigmatulin.

Feels good to have heard their words. Too bad we can't respond.

shanusmagnus• 11 years ago

I was going to say the opposite -- feels shitty to read that and see that it's still happening, though I guess I could take comfort in that it's less prevalent now.

Semiapies• 11 years ago

I'm just glad they've finally been heard.

Haunting message penned from Soviet 'slaves' found buried in Urals theatre

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