1997/06/01 by John Keep · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis #Law in Society and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.4000/chs.1014
openalex publication_date 1997/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
This is a survey of the most important publications, in Russia and the West, on the Soviet penal system under Stalin, since certain archival data became available to scholars from 1988 onwards. Various data on death sentences and the size of the convict population, compiled by the security authorities since 1953, and the lacunae in them, are assessed. The system was inherently arbitrary, unjust and cruel. The Gulag was an essential buttress of the totalitarian order, designed « to destroy people on a mass scale », not merely a device to boost output on the cheap. Finally the question is raised whether these crimes can be atoned for morally or dealt with judicially, and the writings of ex-Soviet and Western « revisionist » historians are appraised.