#i had this whole post ive been trying to formulate for so so long. abt my issues w ceewilbur and ccwilburisms and | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

canmom · 7 years

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this has gone rather better than I feared I think? we’re having a fairly productive discussion about Soviet and PRC prisons and I’m learning some things and have some new routes to inquire in, though as ever I’m not sure how to assess a lot of these claims about the rehabilitative nature of the Soviet prison system.

Transcript of conversation below:

me: so like i've been silent on this for a long time but like, better to hash it out than have unprincipled peace etc. the way so many of you talk so grandiosely about stalin and especially joke about gulags creeps me the fuck out. like the actual historical event that you're referring to with 'gulag' jokes (whether you mean the Soviet penal system as a whole or specifically the GULAG authority) went way beyond suppressing reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries, it had an incarcerated population comparable (in terms of proportion of population incarcerated) to modern amerika, and honestly seems to do a lot of what capitalist incarceration does. are we really saying this was just and necessary? and even if it is a necessary horror, is it something to treat so lightly?

like fascists and reactionaries must be fought and suppressed, but I flinch when the way we deride them is to joke specifically about the Soviet penal system. and i don't understand how people who claim to have some kind of prison abolitionist politics can treat the incarceration of millions of people (I'm saying that based on Soviet archival data as discussed here http://canonicalmomentum.tumblr.com/post/158463223802/trying-to-learn-a-bit-more-about-soviet-prisons ) so frivolously? like taking that most people here (or at least the ones making gulag jokes) uphold the Soviet Union under Stalin, are you not saying that despite the scale of incarceration? how much unjust imprisonment does there have to be before you can say 'actually this isn't all that funny any more'?

N: Well, these jokes are usually in the context of ppl like literal nazis, or terfs, or other ppl who genuinely cause material harm to oppressed groups. Ive never seen a communist joke abt how a petty thief or someone like that deserving to go to the gulag

me: i guess it comes across like if people are joking about 'gulags' specifically all the time, with relatively little criticism of their actual historical existence except to dispute wildly distorted figures (which i do accept is important), even if it's largely directed at nazis and TWEFs it comes across as praising the soviet penal system as a historical projectif that makes sense

S: it's also a joke mostly, from what I can tell, to dispel the idea of the peaceful tolerant leftist when faced with "X leader killed 8 bajillion people in his prison camps, still think communism is cool?"

this now has me thinking about the history of the gulag joke, and where it all started

that's not a fully formulated opinion btw

me: the current form does seem like a relatively recent development (oddly paralleling the helicopter joke on the right, though i don't think there's any connection)

and sure

S: I am also interested in what the penal system under Mao was like

that's never something I've had hurled at me

and nothing I've actually thought about tbqh

does Mao ever mention the soviet penal system?

sorry, didn't mean to change the topic

G: There is an interview with an American in the Chinese revolutionary penal system floating around online

When I get home...I'll link it

C: it was an American couple, they wrote a bookand did an interview

can't remember the name atm tho

me: thanks. i know relatively little, just that MIM says (about executions rather than incarceration) [https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/mythsofmao.html ] for the GLF:

Mao did claim government responsibility for 800,000 executions between 1949 and 1954. These were popularly sanctioned executions done in people's trials against the most hated landlords and pro-Japanese (pro-imperialist) elements who had terrorized the masses during World War II and its aftermath.(4)

with the cite being

4. "Whom have we executed? What sort of people? Elements for whom themasses had great hatred, and whose blood-debt was heavy." (Chairman Mao Talks to the People, NY: Pantheon Books, 1974), p. 77. Mao also said fewer executions would be made in the future. (Ibid., 78)

and for the cultural revolution:

Mao's enemies in China were more realistic than the Western propagandists. They directly blamed Mao and his followers, the so-called Gang of Four, for a total of 34,000 executions or deaths caused by other means of repression during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution.

they don't dispute this figure, just say they're not sure whether those 34k people should have been executed.

that's executions though, they don't comment on incarceration

there's a wikipedia article but it has zero references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_system_in_China#Punishable_offenses

and doesn't give much in the way of dates, seguing from the mao period to more recent events without much clarity

C: Okay so im gonna try to write a longer response here now that im back at my computer

for editing reasons im gonna write it in docs and paste it here, just letting you know lol

me: ok thank you

N: and as for the stalin point: we are maoists, we are critical of stalin and the USSR as we are with mao and the PRC. these jokes arent usually to make light of genuinely bad things that he did or mistakes that he made, but are usually making a mockery of nazi/cia lies about who he was and what his reign was like

me: nod

That’s reassuring to hear honestly?

C: First, its probably inaccurate to say that the majority of people within the Soviet penal system were counter-revolutionaries. Really, the majority were just criminals: murderers, rapists, thieves, etc. While it did have an incarcerated population similar in size to the US, it was very unlike US incarceration. For one, in any given year, 20-40% of inmates were released. More advanced prisons had educational and manual training services, prisoners were not required to wear uniforms, and they even received a 2 week vacation every year.

This was incredibly progressive for its time, and even now. The Soviet Justice system was incredibly progressive in other ways as well. For example, people’s courts (where citizens sat on the bench with a professional judge) tried around 80% of all cases, and legal services were completely free. All prisons, labor colonies, etc. were focused on rehabilitation. For example, a lot of people mention how the Baltic-White Sea Canal was an example of exploitation by the gulag system but never mention how it benefitted many of its workers- 12,000 were freed, 300 received scholarships, and 59,000 had reduced their sentences. It wasn’t just rehabilitation in words like capitalists say. Even Robert Conquest wrote: ““Many prisoners were quoted as expressing their joy at having been saved and turned into decent citizens.” Another interesting fact about the differences in American and Soviet prisons: In 1934, prisoners in labor camps were given the right to vote (as was afforded to all citizens). Today in the US, prisoners are completely stripped of that right.

Was this a completely good system? Of course not. And theres a lot of discussion on what is good and bad about the Gulags. But they were very very different from US prisons, and have to be put in their historical context.(also, its not really like a helicopter joke.

What happened to people who went on “helicopter rides”? They were brutally murdered. What happened to people who went to soviet prisons? They were rehabilitated into society. Even though some people died that was not their purpose, their function, or their goal. The vast majority of deaths within soviet prisons happened during the war when resources were scarce, and not as any policy of extermination)

Heres the book written by the two americans who were imprisoned in China: Prisoners of Liberation by Rickett and Rickett http://www.mediafire.com/file/5ky94awaaarr4tq/Rickett+and+Rickett+-+Prisoners+of+Liberation--Four+Years+in+a+Chinese+Communist+Prison.pdf

me: Still processing this (and thank you for taking the time to properly respond) but I didn't say the majority of people in the Soviet penal system were counterrevolutionaries - I was citing archive statistics which show the opposite. I was actually skeptical that prison would work any better to prevent murder, theft and rape in a socialist society than they do in a capitalist society, though if the things you are saying about the prisons being mainly rehabiliative are true, it sounds like it is at least better than the mostly just plain punitive prisons in capitalist countries.

I absolutely agree that GULAG and the other parts of the soviet prison system need to be put in their historical context and understood as a historical phenomenon with a lot of different contradictory properties? But I find it very difficult to celebrate any prisons, and to me making jokes about gulags crosses that line.

I'll definitely read Ricket & Ricket though, that looks very interesting

C: yea listen to the interview too, its fairly short and makes a way stronger case coming from personal experience than i could ever hope to on an online chat

chinese prisons did a much better job at rehabilitating people to my knowledge, and had less human cost (mostly because well, they didnt exist at a time of invasion by fascists)

me: nod

i admit i'm curious about the demographics of the thieves imprisoned in the Soviet system, because theft as I understand it is especially driven by economic need, something that can't really be addressed by prisons

I guess that answers the question I had in any case; you'd say the Soviet prison system was broadly worth upholding as something sufficiently different from the amerikan one, which makes gulag jokes come across as considerably less unpleasant. There are some things I'm still curious about for the sake of having a better historical understanding, but I understand if you've spent enough time writing about this.

#incarceration

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