Kate Brown writes that the Gulag wasn’t really intended to be a series of death camps

What were the Gulag planners thinking? Who would send hungry, unshod people to the Siberian Taiga without supplies, shelter and tools in the midst of a famine in order to build a brave new world? If this wasn’t sheer sadism, but really a utopian project, as Werth, I think rightly, asserts, who could imagine success?

But really, penal reform. A society struggling to find a place for it’s malcontents and others uprooted during the drive to collectivization. To save money on guards and prison staff – it was economics, yo. It just went off the rails, a bit. Stalin meant well, you see.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.