Authentic data show a reality that is fundamentally different from the one that is being introduced from school into the minds of people both in the West and in Russia itself. The myth of the "bloody USSR" was created to slander and denigrate Russia-USSR and Soviet civilization as the main enemy of the West on the planet.
In particular, the creators of the myth of the "bloody terror" in the USSR were not interested in the composition of crimes committed by prisoners. Those who were condemned by the Soviet repressive and punitive organs always appear in the works of the "whistleblowers" as innocent victims of Stalinism. But in fact, most of the prisoners were ordinary criminals: thieves, murderers, rapists, etc. And such people were never considered innocent victims at any time and in any country. In particular, in Europe and the United States, in the West as a whole, until the last period of modern history, punishments against criminals were very harsh. And in the present United States, this attitude has existed up to our time.
The Soviet punitive system was not something out of the ordinary. In the 1930s, the Soviet punitive system included: prisons, labor camps, gulag labor colonies and special open zones. Those who committed serious crimes (murder, rape, economic crimes, etc.) were sent to labor camps. This largely extended to those who were convicted of counter-revolutionary activities. Other criminals sentenced to more than 3 years in prison may also have been sent to labor camps. After serving a certain term in a labor camp, a prisoner could go to a milder regime in a labor colony or a special open zone.
Labor camps were usually large areas in which prisoners lived and worked under close supervision and security. To make them work was an objective necessity, since society could not take the burden with the full content of prisoners in complete isolation and immunity. As of 1940, there were 53 labor camps. Obviously, if a survey of Russian citizens is currently conducted on the correctness of the work of prisoners, the majority will agree that criminals must work to support themselves and, if possible, compensate for material damage to society and people who have suffered at their hands.
The GULAG system also included 425 labor colonies. They were much smaller than the camps, with less strict regime of detention and less supervision. They were sent to prisoners with short terms - convicted of less serious criminal and political crimes. They had the opportunity to work freely in factories and in agriculture and were part of civil society. Special open zones were mostly agricultural areas for those who were sent into exile (for example, kulaks during collectivization). People with less guilt could serve time in these zones.
As the figures from the archives show, there were much fewer political prisoners than criminal ones, although the slanderers of the USSR tried and are trying to show the opposite. Thus, one of the leading slanderers of the USSR, the Anglo-American writer Robert Conquest, claimed that in 1939 there were 9 million political prisoners in labor camps and another 3 million people died in 1937-1939. All these, in his opinion, are political prisoners. According to Conquest, in 1950 there were 12 million political prisoners. However, archival data show that in 1939 the total number of prisoners was just over 2 million.people: of them in the labor camps of the GULAG - 1, 3 million people, of whom 454 thousand were convicted of political crimes (34, 5%). Not 9 million, as Conquest claimed. In 1937-1939. 166,000 people died in the camps, not 3 million, according to a Western professional disinformator. In 1950, there were only 2.5 million prisoners, in the labor camps of the GULAG - 1.4 million, of whom counter-revolutionaries (political prisoners) - 578 thousand, not 12 million!
The figures of another professional liar, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, about 60 million or more people who died in labor camps, do not need to be analyzed at all because of their complete absurdity.
How many people were sentenced to death before 1953? Conquest reports that the Bolsheviks killed 12 million political prisoners in labor camps between 1930 and 1953. Of these, approximately 1 million people were killed in 1937-1938. Solzhenitsyn reports that tens of millions were killed, of which at least 3 million were killed in 1937-1938 alone.
The archives say otherwise. Soviet and Russian historian Dmitry Volkogonov, who was in charge of Soviet archives under President Boris Yeltsin, gave the following figure: between October 1, 1936 and September 30, 1938, there were 30,514 people sentenced to death by military tribunals. Other information comes from the data of the KGB: 786,098 people were sentenced to death for counter-revolutionary activities in the period from 1930 to 1953 (that is, for 23 years). Moreover, the majority were convicted in 1937-1938. It is also necessary to take into account the fact that not all those sentenced to death were actually executed. A significant proportion of death sentences were commuted to labor camps.
Another slander against the USSR is an unlimited period of stay in prisons and camps. They say that the one who got there never went out. This is another lie. Most of those who were imprisoned during the Stalinist period were sentenced to a term of no more than 5 years, as a rule. Thus, criminals in the RSFSR in 1936 received the following sentences: 82.4% - up to 5 years, 17.6% - 5-10 years. 10 years was the maximum possible period until 1937. Political prisoners convicted by civil courts in the USSR in 1936 received sentences: 42, 2% - up to 5 years, 50, 7% - 5-10 years. As for those sentenced to imprisonment in the labor camps of the GULAG, where longer terms of imprisonment were established, statistics from 1940 show that those who served there up to 5 years were 56.8%, from 5 to 10 years - 42.2%. Only 1% of prisoners received sentences of more than 10 years. That is, most of the prisoners had sentences of up to 5 years.
The number of deaths in labor camps varies from year to year: from 5.2% in 1934 (with 510 thousand prisoners in labor camps), 9.1% in 1938 (996 thousand prisoners) to 0.3 % (1.7 million prisoners) in 1953. The highest figures in the most difficult years of the Great Patriotic War: 18% - 1942 (for 1.4 million prisoners), 17% - in 1943 (983 thousand). Further, there is a constant and large decline in mortality: from 9.2% in 1944 (663 thousand) to 3% in 1946 (600 thousand) and 1% in 1950 (1.4 million). That is, as the war ended and the material conditions of life in the country improved, the death rate in places of detention dropped sharply.
Obviously, the death rate in the camps was associated not with the "bloody regime" and the personal tough inclinations of Stalin and his entourage, but with the general problems of the country, the lack of resources in society (especially the lack of medicines and food). The most terrible years were the years of the great war, when the invasion of Hitler's "European Union" led to the genocide of the Soviet people and a sharp drop in living standards even in free territories. In 1941-1945. more than 600 thousand people died in the camps. After the war, when living conditions in the USSR began to improve rapidly, as did health care (in particular, antibiotics were massively introduced into practice), mortality in the camps also dropped sharply.
Thus, the tales of many millions and even tens of millions of people deliberately destroyed under Stalin are a black myth created by the enemies of the Union in the West during the information war and supported by anti-Sovietists in Russia itself. The goal of the myth is to denigrate and discredit Soviet civilization in the eyes of mankind and the citizens of Russia themselves. Destruction and rewriting of true history is taking place in the interests of the West.
