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Comment by gyardley | Hacker News Reader

I can't for the life of me figure out why the headline writer put the word 'slaves' in quotes.

Probably because they were technically convicts from governments point of view, instead of outright slaves or someones property.

I'm a bit surprised by 1954 as the date, since it's pretty far from the original purges in the 30s, but not at all surprised by the find. The disappearances and summary judgements, resulting in either executions or the slow rot of the labor camps, are well documented.

A person I know from that same town found a German gun folded in oiled cloth in his parents' ceiling when he was renovating. The building was built by German POWs.

they were technically convicts from governments point of view

This isn't entirely true. The work camps were powered by convicts, but also by putatively free exiles who had been sent there for a variety of reasons. And in some cases, convicts who had completed their sentences were technically freed, but not allowed to leave the camps anyway.

Source: I'm currently reading "Gulag: A History" by Anne Applebaum. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224379.Gulag

A huge number of soldiers returning from the war had been handed 25-year (in most cases equivalent to life-long) sentences under the 58th article of the Soviet penal code (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58_(RSFSR_Penal_Code) — the Soviet Union officially had no political prisoners, only criminals). For the most part, their crime was contact with other Allied troops, so it was easy to accuse them of contact with the West, and eliminate any dangerous ideas they could have brought into the bright nation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the heaven of the working man. These people would have been serving their sentences through the 1950s, and Khruschev's rehabilitation policies (far from popular in the Politburo) did not start until 1956.

I know it was called the glorious proletariat, but I was wondering if the working men, proles, brought it about. I guess they didn't, but I am wondering how it all happened.

They deported loads of people from occupied territories after end of war and releasing them only started around that time.

My guess it that the word "slavery" usually implies chattel slavery, whereas these people were serving sentences of penal servitude.

Others have pointed this out, but penal servitude is alive and well in the US prison system as well [1] and it's not common to use the word slavery for that. Maybe they should, but it is arguably a different concept from chattel slavery.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_State...

Hooray prison-industrial complex :(

Because they were prisoners?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_State...

And what, apart from legal approval, is morally or materially different about forcing a prisoner to work and forcing a free citizen to work?

What, apart from legal approval is morally or materially different from performing capital punishment on convicted murderers and performing capital punishment on a free citizen?

The point is there is a spectrum/grey line.

I find it pretty disturbing that you can't tell the difference. That's a rather serious moral failing on your part.

Sweet! Value judgments on the internet!

Prisoners have been one of the most common types of slaves in history. And one of the few explicitly tolerated as such in places that like to claim they've abolished slavery. [0]

[0] See, e.g., US Constitution, Amendment XIII

I understand your sentiment completely – they were slaves and that crime should be recognised. The reason the headline has the word in quotes is that it's quoting their own statement about themselves: quote quotes, not scare quotes.

The article seems to refer to them as "prisoners" more often than "slaves", so this may be why (and the article is more sensational using "slaves" in the title vs. "prisoners").

I understand that it can be subjective and will assume the writers audience might find the context sensitive. In this case it seems to fit well in my opinion.

I think that's because it's literally quoting the letter-writers' description of themselves.

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