Matvei Bronstein: Theorical physicist. Pioneer of quantum gravity. Arrested, accused of fictional “terroristic” activity and shot in 1938
Lev Shubnikov: Experimental physicist. Accused on false charges. Executed
Adrian Piotrovsky: Russian dramaturge. Accused on false charges of treason. Executed.
Nikolai Bukharin: Leader of the Communist revolution. Member of the Politburo. Falsely accused of treason. Executed.
General Alexander Egorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union. Commander of the Red Army Southern Front. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Arrested, accused on false charges, executed.
General Mikhail Tukhachevsky Supreme Marshal of the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the Red Napoleon. Arrested, accused on fake charges. Executed.
Grigory Zinoviev: Chairman of the Communist International Movement. Member of the Soviet Politburo. Accused of treason and executed.
Even the secret police themselves were not safe:
Genrikh Yagoda : Right-hand of Joseph Stalin. Head of the NKD Secret Police. He spied on everyone in Russia and jailed thousands of innocents. Yagoda was arrested and executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda
Nikolai Yezhov : Appointed head of the NKD Secret Police after the death of Yagoda. Arrested on fake charges, executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov
Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 600 000 people were killed and over 100 000 people were deported to Gulags in Siberia.
Today, Russian schools no longer teach what Joseph Stalin did. Many young russians actually believe that Stalin was a great patriot.
This is part of an effort by Vladimir Putin to rehabilitate him:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/05/21/stalin-is-making-a-comeback-in-russia-heres-why-a89155
Americans should read Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn to see how bad it could be.
Especially because there is a well design abridged translated version of it approved by the author.
I can only second this, it’s quite the read.
Americans can’t read.
The funny thing about Gulag Archipelago is that it lays out a primitive carceral state that Americans have already long since surpassed domestically.
You shove a flashlight under your chin and whisper “What if large numbers of people were thrown in prison for purely political reasons?!” while blinking straight passed our own 2M person strong national prison system and 5M person parole system. And that’s 2021 statistics. We have no idea how big the number is going to get in the wake of the Trump ICE era of arrests, incarcerations, and deportations.
Nevermind Japanese Internment or the Native American Reservation system or the US encirclement and blockade of Cuba. Or the open air prison that is Haiti or Gaza. I see it referenced as a “Must Read” by folks who seem unable to draw the historical parallels to the modern moment.
USA might hold the total record but they’re a long ways off of reaching the USSR’s percentage of population imprisoned.
The USSR had about 3 million people in these camps at its height from a total population of 179 million meaning 1.68% compared to the USA’s current 0.7%.
Also, I think China would probably be leading in total. Maybe even percentage.
You’re discussing with a tankie. They’ll “whatsbout” any bad things the soviets did. It’s like a blanket excuse for them.
Yes, I spend most of my time on here arguing against Tankies.
Have you gotten your “banned from .ml” badge yet?
Never had an account there to start with.
You don’t need to, you can get banned if you discuss on one of their communities. You just bet banned from .ml so it’s not a big deal.
Firstly, assuming you don’t simply discount 5M parolees as “not imprisoned” and exclusively fixate on the 2M active inmates, that’s 3% not 0.7% dealing with the baggage of a prison sentence.
Secondly, as of 2015, about 55% of people imprisoned in federal or state prisons were black or Latino. despite making up only 32% of the total population. The statistics get even worse when you throw gender in the mix. When you recognize that the goal of the American prison system is to target and press gang as many Colored Men as possible, you realize we’re talking about a full 15% of black men.
And that’s actual imprisonment, not the harassment of arrest, jailing, and release that so many people have endured. Half of black males, 40 percent of white males suffer an arrest by age 23. I’ve experienced being arrested twice in my life, once all the way through the booking process only to have a DA decide it was waste of time to prosecute someone with enough family resources to hire a lawyer and fight the charges.
How many people are in ICE detention centers right now? We have no idea. The information is not publicly available and the current government has gone out of its way to conceal who is being arrested, where they are being held, and whether they are even still in the country.
You’re correct to assume that I don’t think Parolees count as imprisoned because that would make no sense at all.
If you think the hard labor camps that millions of enslaved individuals died in under the USSR were fair and without bias on the topic of dempgraphics then I think you’re kind of an idiot.