"US worse than the USSR"? American Amnesia of the worst sort

[Gravitycollapse]

156. Are you waxing philosophical or attempting to argue the literal meaning of "death machine?"

"the USSR produced death, not life." - So your argument now is that I am denying the ability of Russians to procreate during the Gulag era? That's insane.

One of the most important aspects of these Gulags was to keep their effects out of the minds of Westerners. Which is why they did things like take several prisoners, clean them up, give them papers, fly them out to the West for inspection and then send them back to the camps when they were done. Political prisoners were some of the most potent issues the Gulags had to deal with. And it was easier to conceal or explain imprisonment than disappearances or mass murder.

The political prisons I've read about were actually extremely harsh. But they fortunately were not harsh in the same way that the camps were on the leading edge of the northern rail lines (where prisoners were sent out half naked into the snow to chop down trees until they froze to death). The political camps consisted largely of solitary confinement. The prisoners were often stripped down naked and forced to sit on stools in the dead of winter. The point was not to kill them but instead to break them.

The true expendables were those from the non-political, low economic class. They were simply disappeared and never heard from again.