The Gulags: The USSR's Slave Labour Source

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[@IntotheShadows]

Thanks to Shaker & Spoon for sponsoring today's video. Visit shakerandspoon.com/shadows to get a $20 off coupon at checkout.

[@fvckyoutubescensorshipandt2718]

1:52 For those that don't give 2 shits about the overpriced crap pitched on YT.

[@ignitionfrn2223]

If you are interested into horrifying penitentiary camps, you can check out the french bagnes of French Guyanna (especially the Cayenne One also known as the *Devil's Island* )

[@geraldkuklinski9543]

This is the perfect advertiser for Into the Shadows. People watching videos about dark and disturbing events like this could really use a drink after.

[@fvckyoutubescensorshipandt2718]

@@geraldkuklinski9543 Eh I just have it delivered from my local grocery store, $5-10 a bottle. $50 a month = ripoff, plus if I wanted to waste time in the kitchen mixing shit I might as well brew my own booze while I'm at it.

[@dalelane1948]

At this point im almost certain that the "Simon Whistler" we see in 19 poo toob vids/day, on 7 poo channels, is an AI generated Max Headroom style presenter. The on;y other possibility is that he has been cloned.

[@samiam2088]

Not so long ago, I saw some communist (American) student on Twitter claim how Gulags weren't that bad because the purpose was to "give people work and a trade" ... I nearly fell over in my chair.

[@markzuckergecko621]

There's no limit to the mental gymnastics a communist will use to excuse the horrors of their worldview.

[@russellfitzpatrick503]

That was the reply throughout Western Europe during the 60s, 70s and 80s. Even when the USSR fell, and the afchives were opened, these folks said that it was all made up ..... These are the real evil people, and they made themselves rich through it

[@Kabbaler]

Lmao, every fake Reddit comment ever ^

[@cclayton70]

Not surprising. Communists/Socialist believe a lot of nonsense

[@Thehomelessathlete]

Its really surprising because in high school in California at least you learn about the red terror like every two years or at least for two semesters or something. We definitely learned about the farmer starvation in Ukraine led to millions of deaths as well as gulags

[@ihatebalrog]

Hi from Latvia! As a historian myself (and a journalist - currently I'm in Kherson front in Ukraine) I'd like to thank You for covering these. They killed plenty of my family and their friends during the Soviet occupation. Good work, Simon & team! When I get back to safety, I'd like to email you about an interview btw

[@DubbleOh7]

Stay safe brother

[@djdrack4681]

If you're really in Kherson right now damn. I'd have thought that internet there was completely disrupted or unreliable. Just remember when you're done dealing with Ruskies to turn around and 'fix' the issues there in Ukraine too. No time like a good ol' dust-off to bring sweeping change to authoritarian govs. ;)

[@ihatebalrog]

@@djdrack4681 LifeCell mobile web. Currently in Mikolayiv, the closest city to the front under Ukrainian control, about 30km or so away -we stay here overnight, because obviously nobody's allowing journalists to stay in extreme danger at night here. Going back tomorrow at 8.30AM.

[@SuperPiratesfan]

God protect you.

[@markzuckergecko621]

@@oliverlaw02 found the communist.

[@wheelie26]

That’s awful. As a child in the 70s we would hear older children say if you’re not good or if you don’t do…. you’ll go to the gulag. We all knew it was something bad but had no idea what that was or even where.

[@ayrnovem9028]

The sensationalism-fliied horror story told here, while containing grains of truth, is largely based on hearsay and anecdotal evidence. By people who were highly politically motivated to portray everything about USSR as horrible as possible. Here are a few facts about how Volga-Don channel was built that run contrary to the narrative being spun here: 1) People who were doing prison time while working there were still paid. 2) Many brigades were mixed, including both people doing time and free workers, working in the same conditions. 2) 1 day of works counted as 2-3 days for the purpose of their prison time. As a result, 26 thousand people were freed before their term. 3) Of these 26 thousand, 3 thousand received various goverment awards. 15 of them received the Order of the Red Banner for Labor, which was an extremely high and prestigious award in USSR. Don't take me wrong - it was still hard, gruelling work. Still... That's a "slightly" different picture compared to scores and scores of hopeless, emaciated bodies being worked to death under inhuman watch of merciless guards - which is how this video depicts the situation.

[@jelenalahtina]

My grandpa was sent to Vorkuta for more than 10 years. They ate snakes that died on the railroads after trains passed. The reason that he was sent there was because he had land and farm animals. The only reason he said he survived was because he never signed any papers

[@noellewhoops]

what papers are there to sign

[@ruturajshiralkar5566]

@@noellewhoops Denouncing that you are a Kulak and are involved in Anti Soviet Counter Revolutionary activities.

[@MrDzala]

@@noellewhoops land ownership papers

[@egertroos-qh7hw]

Your surname is finnic. Are you ingrian or karelian by chance?

[@DarkWarchieff]

My grandpa, Polish, was there as child with family members. He died a few months ago after defying the prognosises of doctors for over 10 years.

[@_audacity2722]

haha that's awesome

[@christopherseivard8925]

When “ the Gulag Archapellego” won the Pulitzer Prize, the book seemed to be widely read at the beach, in Ocean City, New Jersey. While on vacation, my father, who was reading the book, commented that “ you can tell who is reading the book, from the horror on their faces; expressionless, staring at the ocean.” I have the book still, maybe I will be brave enough to read it.

[@19.nguyennhulam88]

And more interesting fact: the writer is a fascist sympathizer

[@janedunlap6879]

My grandma grew up in Czechoslovakia. When Russia invaded her town, they killed all the men in her family or took them to gulags. She escaped to the US, because she had married my grandpa who was a US citizen. When he was little his dad developed black lung from mining, and they moved back to Czechoslovakia. When the war broke out, they were stuck. After the war, my grandma had to stay for a year before being allowed to join my grandpa and she had to have a sponsor. She didn't learn English til my dad went to kindergarten, and he taught her. She regularly spoke Slovak till her death. She also knew Russian fluently. She swore at a Russian hockey player (in Russian) that didn't give me his autograph because I was at the end of the line. I've never seen someone's eyes go so wide. He came back and apologized, but I could still see he was shaking from this little old lady swearing at him.

[@egertroos-qh7hw]

Russians and communism are filth

[@anastylos2812]

You didn't mention one last group of prisoners: Germans. German prisoners were part of the reparations Germany has to pay to Russia. My grandmother met my grandfather in a goulag. She was to weak to carry the logs and was allowed to draw the cart with the dead bodies to put them in massgraves.. She became ill and was allowed to go to Germany within a year. There she waited for my grandfather to return too, which took more than a year. She said that the Russian soldiers had it nearly as bad as the prisoners.

[@harrietharlow9929]

I can't imagine that anyone except those at the top had it good under the Soviet system. My uncle and aunt lived in East Berlin and while adequate, I wouldn't call it equal to what is considered acceptable in the West.

[@adolfsatan6105]

No one will discuss crimes against Germans

[@Sam-lj9vj]

@@adolfsatan6105 Eisenhouwer's deathcamps are a good example of this genocide.

[@TTFerdinand]

@@harrietharlow9929 I grew up in Estonian SSR during the Soviet occupation and whenever my grandfather managed to visit East Germany for work, he brought back toys and foodstuff we couldn't even dream of here, it was like gifts from paradise. I soon learned to hide all this "fancy stuff" from my friends because they couldn't keep their mouths shut and I got bullied in school for having things others didn't have. And then I have a memory of a distant relative visiting from deep within Russia who was amazed of what we had available in stores here. Talk about equality in the system that claimed to be the most equal ever.

[@egertroos-qh7hw]

​@@TTFerdinand sa eestlane või sibul?

[@Jayjay-qe6um]

"When I was in the gulag I would sometimes even write on stone walls. I used to write on scraps of paper, then I memorised the contents and destroyed the scraps." -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[@user-gj4dd9et7j]

As I know, he worked in kitchen cuz he help guard of gulag telling them information about prisoners

[@ashesfalldown492]

I was a Russian major originally and took a Soviet film class. I remember a haunting film scene where the families of those at a camp would watch the logs float down the river. There would be messages carved into the huge literal driftwood. It was the only way these families ever heard from anyone in the camp upstream. That scene still haunts me. It is unimaginable, being unable to contact anyone in there, scraps of information floating down the river was all they had to find out if someone still lived. These weren't hardened criminals (mostly), they were political prisoners, who made made the wrong person angry one day. I am glad to see someone talk about it, because mostly, it just is glossed over. Stalin was a monster whose crimes are almost unbelievable.

[@OptimusMaximusNero]

One of the most famous responsibles of the Soviet Holocaust was Nikolai Yezhov, a NKVD agent knowns for performing a great amount of mass arrests, tortures and executions under Stalin's orders. However, Stalin accused him in 1938 of leading anti-Soviet activities and forced the agent to make a confession, causing his execution two years later. He was then removed from a famous picture in which he appears smiling with Stalin, making it seem like he never existed...

[@Kurus-pq7xw]

Don't neglect to see the modern parallels with the current leftist establishments across the west. Granted it's nowhere near as bad as the USSR and i pray it never gets that bad. But it will unless ppl pay attention. Don't be a victim of propaganda, even if it makes you feel good and right.

[@ShiftyMcGoggles]

So long as the only thing that remains of him, is just a name and the atrocities he committed, I think that's a fitting end. Reduced to nothing but the sins and a name. No pictures, nothing to humanise of sympathise with, just the monsterous legacy.

[@DanielDuintjer]

@@ShiftyMcGoggles except that is not good. You want to be able to put a face to monsters. It helps people understand that this was a human that was capable of such atrocities. Visuals are effective aids for people. Also, it would piss off Stalin even more if he remained on a fuckton of pictures c:

[@shakiMiki]

Don't call it Holocaust. That diminishes the unique barbarity of the industrial scale murder of Jews & others. It's a different order of crime.

[@Kurus-pq7xw]

@@shakiMiki the fact of the matter is the Holocaust is not actually that unique. And it's scale nor it's barbarity. It's actually far less barbarous than many similar happenings throughout the millennia. There are many events in which entire races of people were exterminated, entire cultures and religions crushed underfoot. And that's happened in virtually every area of the globe throughout all of human history. The Holocaust is just one of the most recent and one of the ones that's played up the most. I assure you that Genghis Khan and his hordes did far more damage to the groups that they encountered and to the human genome itself then Hitler could have ever dreamed of. The genetic consequences of the great Khan's conquests are forever indented into a significant percentage of the entire human population. The Holocaust was pretty f****** bad. But don't pretend like it's the end all be all of human tragedies because it's far from. China literally has more people in concentration camps now than the Nazis ever did. And they are also doing pretty much all of the same things including organ harvesting which the Nazis did not do, as well as grotesque medical experiments. In fact, some of the head transplant surgeries that have been attempted in the past 5 years may very well have used political prisoners.

[@GrievousReborn]

I've seen people try to defend the gulags in comparison to the Nazi death camps saying that the gulags was for political reasons like that justifies the horrors the prisoners had to endure. Edit: What a surprise a couple people trying to defend them in my replies.

[@Sniperboy5551]

There is a growing extremist sect of people on the far-left who would actually round up anyone who disagrees with them (especially Conservatives) and put them in a camp. The same people who call everyone who disagrees with them a fascist…

[@oldleatherhandsfriends4053]

Nazi death camps were for political reasons also. Unless being Jewish is actually a crime.

[@MrFreddyFartface]

Jesus, from our modern democratic perspective it shouldn't be ok to imprison your political opponents at all, let alone work and torture them to death. Anyway, no matter whether the guards spoke German or Russian, I wouldn't want to be sent to either type of camp, or have it exist in the first place.

[@harrietharlow9929]

Neither of them were defensible and should be soundly criticized. There simply is no excuse for a country to resort to slave labour, and both institutions were exactly that.

[@markzuckergecko621]

And when you point out that the communists were also bad, they accuse you of defending Nazis. As though saying you don't like to eat cat shit is the same as saying you like to eat dog shit.

[@beowulf4545]

The sponsor of the video being a food related product considering the topic is a level of unintentional dark humor I love

[@ilajoie3]

Alcohol related product, Simon knows that you'll need some alcohol after this one

[@quester09]

bahaha no wifi in gulag

[@simonpetrikov3992]

It’s like food not everyone gets it

[@willianjohnam7350]

I've met people who never heard about this tragedy and some who are shameless willing to turn a blind eye thanks to their political views.

[@markzuckergecko621]

There's a whole lot of people that deny this all together or make excuses for why it was actually someone else's fault, or some other form of revisionist history. And these are the same people who think everyone who disagrees with them is a fascist, even though there's practically nobody who's openly in support of fascism, or even sympathetic towards fascist ideology.

[@Chris-hb6jt]

Like the New York Times? They’ve still never apologized for denying the existence of gulags. No coincidence when you realize it’s run by a bunch of ultra rich wannabe communists

[@calexander7495]

@@markzuckergecko621 Funnily, those all tend to be the same person, they just change their tune based on the audience. Whether it "didn't happen" at all or "it happened but it was justified" depends on how ideologically aligned you are with them.

[@markzuckergecko621]

@@calexander7495 yep, very true, I've been on some far left channels where they feel more comfortable saying the quiet part out loud, bc the audience is nearly exclusively far left. It's pretty vile, they'll say stuff like yea it's about time the US started rounding up conservatives. And I've recognized the same usernames on more moderate left channels singing a completely different tune, trying to just downplay it like it wasn't that bad or denying it happened all together.

[@scottll]

I'm 32 now, I was around 27 when I first learned about this part of history. Not a single thing was taught to us about it through school. We got to know everything about Nazi Germany and Mussolini's ideals. But everything about the USSR, now looking back appears to have been removed. It shows the reach and power this vile ideology still holds.

[@uruuphiil8335]

Stalin was and is one of the most underestimated monsters of the 20th century.

[@lazlobean]

I had a friend who spent part of her childhood in a camp. Her father was an intellectual. Her stories were amazing.

[@chaosdweller]

I knew a gal named Lesley as a kid , I remember her father's aussie accent as a child at ⚽ games it was neat haha.

[@Luk844]

Yeh nah yeh mate Aussie accent is fair dinkum one of a kind, can't beat our accent. It'll soothe your soul. And put hair on ya chest

[@ignitionfrn2223]

2:55 - Chapter 1 - Establishment of the camps 4:20 - Chapter 2 - The prisoners 7:25 - Chapter 3 - Kolyma 8:50 - Chapter 4 - The hunger 10:30 - Chapter 5 - The violence 12:45 - Chapter 6 - The work 14:50 - Chapter 7 - The end of the gulag

[@malegria9641]

People who do this get a get-into-heaven free card in my book

[@BigMobe]

Chapter 0 - Socialism is a good idea, especially when mixed with politics

[@waynesteffen3262]

Don’t forget 4:15 - Chapter 1.5 - Simon plugs another of his channels

[@robertbarncord6341]

@@waynesteffen3262 Mega projects... Took me a moment lol.

[@waynesteffen3262]

@@robertbarncord6341 I had to listen twice. Our Simon (or the writer) played it smooth.

[@nattoralikk]

I still remember reading The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for the first time, one of the most horrifying yet important books I've read. Really hard read describing some of the most twisted stuff imaginable but I would recommend it to everyone. Would you be able to do a video on the Finnish concentration camps in East Karelia? I had some relatives sent to them but no one knows about them and I can't find much information on them online

[@ThomasCallahanJr]

You mean the playbook for modern “progressives”?

[@gunnara6044]

@@ThomasCallahanJr Modern progressives are not communist

[@pasimajuri1209]

Ha ha ha ! They were not concetration camp . . .

[@AngeliqueStP]

@@ThomasCallahanJr Cope and Seethe, stooge.

[@harrietharlow9929]

@@ThomasCallahanJr Just stop. No progressive I know supports this sort of thing. I am a progressive and I absolutely condemn them. I'd worry more about the right considering them should they gain full state power.

[@StoryTimeZE]

The picture at 11:28 isn’t of a Soviet gulag, rather that’s a picture of the Buchenwald concentration camp after liberation. The author of the novel “night” Eli Wiesel is actually in that picture. He’s the seventh man from the left in the middle row. He’s near a beam behind a bearded man propping himself up.

[@Abby_Liu]

I thought the picture looked much more like the beds in concentration camps, my clearest reference of which being the movie Life is Beautiful.

[@cumgoat]

His whole story is made up lol

[@harrietharlow9929]

@@cumgoat Oh, a Holocaust denier. Still believe Nazi propaganda, eh?

[@levand3673]

@@cumgoat that's garbage! Got any proof?

[@johnjohnson9756]

Yeah, it's almost like this whole channel and associated are just neo-lib bootlickers trying to prop up capitalist propaganda like the double genocide theory.

[@toddhowarddd]

No matter what political affiliation you have: If you think you are immune to the propaganda that enables this sort of thing then you have already been fooled.

[@obama8573]

My great grandpa was ethnic Uzbek and spent over a decade in the gulag. Poor man was there until there were no prisoners left alive to guard. Thats how he lost his job,

[@jonhall2274]

I shouldn't laugh at these type of jokes, but I always do. Lol.

[@wilhelmtaylor9863]

Apart from the 4 groups of prisoners mentioned there is another group rarely talked about: My uncle, Max, was living in East Prussia at the end of WWII. He had been a soldier in the war. The Russians forced all Germans of that region to move to Russia; most of the men were sent to Siberia. Max didn't call them "Gulags" but he described them perfectly. After 14 years he was so worn out that the Russians allowed him to go back to Germany - they didn't want to pay for his welfare. He had severe arthritis due to the cold. His hand knuckles were so swollen he could barely touch anything. He had to take monthly gold shots to help with the pain and swelling. He was continually sick and died at age 53 looking like 80. One of his stories I recall was that they would take moldy bread and mash it down onto shoe polish to absorb the alcohol and eat it to get a fix. He told of subsisting mainly on just bread and snow melt. He considered himself lucky to have "survived".

[@AP-vw1ph]

That's absolute true. My grandfather from Ukraine worked as civil engineer for industrial construction in 1950's, and he witnessed that the work was done by POW's from Germany in extremely inhuman conditions. Dark side of russian history they are being happy and proud of.

[@egertroos-qh7hw]

​@@AP-vw1ph well russians are savages

[@egertroos-qh7hw]

​@@AP-vw1ph I am from Estonia and I am glad my grandpa was a forestbrother who fought against the red asiatic barbaric horde

[@MikeyPaper]

@@egertroos-qh7hw My grandfather was a Hungarian who fought against the Soviets. He was in the gulags for 4 years. When they released him he was just skin and bone.

[@egertroos-qh7hw]

@@MikeyPaper Greetings from Estonia my ugric brother

[@paganlecter6819]

BuT tHaTs nOT rEaL cOmMunIsM!!!!!!!!

[@balazsvarga1823]

Reddit updoot given!

[@cleanerben9636]

Ummm, Ackhululally...

[@MintyLime703]

It really is incredible just how many self-proclaimed socialists have no idea what socialism even is. Sometimes it's to the point where they're unknowingly pushing for capitalist ideas of individual rights or less government overreach thinking it's socialism, lol. And don't get me started on how everyone (especially socialists) still thinks national socialists and fascists were right wing despite sharing absolutely nothing in common with the right. You gotta give 20th century leftists credit for one thing; they fucked up basic political definitions and they fucked them up real good. It was so successful that people are still falling for it.

[@livialaporte3050]

But its not. A cruel and fked up leader is cruel and fked up wether they're a communist or a capitalist. Communist ideology is not based on "lets kill millions of people", Stalinism is.

[@AychSkwaird]

I mean… it kinda isn’t. While the USSR was founded on the grounds of socialism, it ended up being more alike fascism than most think, given the anti-democratic system and political oppression. Obviously the USSR was a shitty place to live for many people, but I’m sick of people believing it was because of communism as an ideology and not because of the totalitarian system of the USSR.

[@andyginterblues2961]

I studied Russian lit. in college, and read "The Gulag Archipelago" years ago. There are very few non- fiction books that describe man's inhumanity to man, and the depths of human depravity like this book. I agree with another commenter on this post that everyone should read it. My Latvian ex wife's great uncle was captured by the red army during the annexation of the Baltics following WWll. He ended up in the gulags, where he died. My ex's family owned mercantile establishments in Latvia, and so were considered members of the "bourgeoise", enemies of the Soviet state. My ex's mom managed to escape the raid on their house, and made it to a refugee camp in Germany. She was a teenager.

[@jmpattillo]

I saw a Che Guevara t-shirt that had this printed below his iconic portrait: “Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this stupid t-shirt”

[@notmenotme614]

I wonder how many people capitalism is going to kill when they can’t afford to heat their homes this winter and eat. Or can’t afford medical care.

[@_audacity2722]

That's almost half as many as capitalism has killed

[@Pharis111]

@@_audacity2722 ah yes, the old, this ideology had a capitalist economic model (so almost every political group in existence since that is how humans tend to roll), therefore they all killed in the name of capitalism (meanwhile the communists gladly killed in the name of communism). Also that same propaganda point tries to blame things like the black death, small pox, and spanish flu deaths on capitalism (while ignoring the fact that capitalism or not, these illnesses can easily kill a fuckton of people). Hell that same capitalism statement tries to say the holocaust was caused by capitalism and not by the funny with the funny mustache who shits his pants and had a creepy obsession with his significantly younger niece.

[@_audacity2722]

@@Pharis111 you mean the guy with the funny moustache that capitalists enabled and supported in the 1930s? The guy with the moustache who Henry Ford - American capitalist - was still manufacturing war machine parts for even during the war?? Is that the guy your talking about? The guy who was allowed by CAPITALIST STATES to have concentration camps starting in 1932 because he wasn't interfering with capitalist profits? Is that the guy with the funny moustache you meant? The guy who the USA actually wanted to see invade Russia and destroy the Soviet Union? That guy?

[@_audacity2722]

@@Pharis111 have you ever read the Black Book of Communism? It counts *lack of birth rate maintenance* as part of the death toll of communism. I think it's more than fair to attribute the Holocaust to capitalism, considering capitalists literally appeased Hitler for 10 years while he was running concentration camps. Herbert Hoover actually co-owned a mining company in Russia that was kicked out by the Bolsheviks. He met with Hitler in 1932 while the Dachaus concentration camp was open. He openly admitted that he wanted Hitler to invade EAST and conquer Russia so he could re-privatize the mines for Hoover's company. They were willing and happy to ignore ALL of Hitler's atrocities until he started invading the West - Germany, France, England etc.

[@tomrafal3655]

My grandparents, aunts and uncles were taken from their homes in Wolyn and put in a gulag in Siberia. They rarely ever spoke about their time there.

[@endrankluvsda4loko172]

It's still so weird to me people glorify Lenin/Stalin. They were just monsters and murderers.

[@tannermurphree8247]

For anyone seriously interested in this, I highly recommend Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”. And for the record it did change somewhat after Stalin’s death, but it was still pretty bleak.

[@harrietharlow9929]

I'm surprised that Putin hasn't reestablished them. Of course with his praise of Stalin, that might still happen. I've long thought he was an unregenerate Stalinist.

[@JamesPhieffer]

Also, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", about a gulag prisoner, also by Solzhenitsyn.

[@sned_music]

Came here to comment about it also... One of the most profound reading experiences and realisations of my life

[@hannesjakobsson765]

It's better to read the works of actual historians

[@JamesPhieffer]

@@hannesjakobsson765 it's better to read original sources.

[@Direkin]

Remember when Goldsmith's Students Union came out and said that Gulags were compassionate places, and everyone who thought otherwise were ignorant? They deleted that tweet...

[@tomben6180]

I genuinely think Students are the stupidest people in society in the 21st century. There’s a hint of early Maoism about them

[@fetidcreeper]

Should be noted, the number of Zeks who died in the gulag will forever be unknown, as the way they were run did not lend itself to accountability. Nor, it should be added, is it made clear to how many died in the camp, and how many died during the compulsory "interrogations" before the person was transformed into the zek, or the prisoner of the camp system.

[@vege4920]

This reminds me of a part in the archipelago, when he wrote about the construction of the train tracks. Paraphrasing. "They did not bother with any cowardly half-truths when writing how many people died, they simply wrote that no one died. There were 100 000 when the construction began and 100 000 when the construction ended". I think that was the amount in the book.

[@fetidcreeper]

@@vege4920 something similar. I'm actually re-listening on audible again for the umpteenth time, one of the best performances lent to his son.

[@afs101]

1.6m is the official soviet number. its like asking a 6 year old how many biscuits he ate.

[@vidsbychazzle2056]

I have watched Simon over all his channels.both serious and sarcastic for several years.Every time we get the Whistleboy mic drop at the end, I say, "Damn!! That was some heavy shit !!" Perfect ending for terrible subject matter.

[@peterwojtek8468]

Thank you for covering this (and the Holodomor). Both my polish grandparents were sent to the Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp (Kazakhstan) when Poland was partitioned in half. To this day people in my home country (France, where Soviet horrors have been more or less memory holed, mainly due to academia being historically left leaning) are taken aback when I have to explain what they've been through. As an informative read Alongside Solzhenitsyn, I'd also recommend The Black Book of Communism and Arendt's book on The Origins of Totalitarianism.

[@_audacity2722]

Black Book of Communism has been debunked and Solzhenitsyn worked for the Nazis as a propagandist. You should find better sources to hock your ideology

[@peterwojtek8468]

@@_audacity2722 You can't just say something has been debunked without providing sources -and yeah, Wikipedia saying that Chomsky disagrees doesn't count as evidence. All contributors to the book are licensed historians with peer reviewed work on their resume -the book isn't perfect (as all history books tend to be, and the part on afro-communisms which I was eager to read is, unfortunately, poorly written). Anyway, what ideology exactly am I supposed to have ?

[@erichusayn]

If you really want a deep dive into the topic, read "The Gulag Aechipelago" by Aleksandr Sohlzenitsen. It a long, tough read (not just because it's translated from Russian, but that pales in comparison to the subject matter). However horrific it is, it is important to learn history so we are not condemned to repeat it. I believe the audiobook (days long) is up on here if you're not the reading type.

[@user-mt4bh5sm5o]

Its literally fiction - he admitted it himself. Do actual historical research instead of swallowing anti-soviet propaganda,

[@KirtFitzpatrick]

Perhaps watch the video all the way to the end before commenting? Oh look, what's that at 15:57 ..

[@erichusayn]

@@KirtFitzpatrick yeah, I know, but he did not stress the point enough I feel. It's freely accessible and the more people that read it the better.

[@_audacity2722]

@@erichusayn lucky for you, he also didn't stress the fact that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Nazi collaborator who worked for the propaganda department in the 1940s

[@stares398]

The gulag archipelago is fiction 😂

[@markharder3676]

Like the Holocaust survivors, the victims of the gulags likely suffered from damage in parts of their brains. Permanent depression and anxiety, both of which often passed on to their children, lasted through their lives.

[@jordansoerries5911]

Love all the channels Simon they get me through the day at work 🙌

[@omnigar9611]

If you have the kind of job that allows you to watch KZbin, you will probably be replaced by a robot soon

[@FIDEL_CASHFLOW_]

My dad's best friend was a cop in Detroit for over 30 years. Said that a lot of stark realities hit him during his time as a cop and one of them was that there is nothing that human beings won't do to each other. this video is a stark reminder of that.

[@cd5433]

This is one of your best videos yet. Amazing stuff fact boy

[@foxman105]

My great, great uncle ended up in one of those places in Siberia for political reasons. What saved him was, that he was a master cobbler and he stitched and repaired boots of guards and officers. You need good boots when you're in a place like that, so they kept him... relatively safe and didn't let him starve. After he returned he only spoke of that place a few times to my mother. Family considered him dead, but he returned.

[@woobiefuntime]

My family was scared

[@h077y]

Was super weird hearing one of my Russian teachers at uni (in England) talking about the good ol days of the Soviet Union, and she was totally pro putin…

[@Sniperboy5551]

I’m not surprised, communists are taking over universities all across the West. It’s the same deal here in the US.

[@jwenting]

and my history teacher in high school in the Netherlands, and one of my language teachers there, and the economics teacher...

[@maywalker997]

I think that maybe you should raise this matter with the Uni...

[@shizachan8421]

To be fair, for many average people, the Communist or Socialist Systems of Europe offered a level of stability and security that suddenly disappeared after the collape of communism, which was often accompanied with economic decline due to the mismanaged liberalizationduring the transitioning into a market economy. People also have to consider that most people fondly remembering communist states were probably born after the terror of the Lenin and Stalin years, Krushchev and Kosygin had a much softer style of leadership. The collapse of the USSR and its satelite states was pretty devistating, economically speaking, we know now that the western recommended strategy of sudden liberalization of the economy was a mistake, especially compared to the chinese model that implemented market reforms and liberalization under firm state control.

[@JillLulamoon]

I dunno how often Simon looks at comments but I'd really like to see a video about the New Mexico State Prison Riot. It's the most violent prison riot in US history and the level of brutality the prisoners inflicted is incredible. Among other things there was a death squad of inmates who went to Cell Block 4 (the snitch ward) and killed almost everyone there. Most were literally tortured to death. I'm always shocked so few people talk about it and I think we really should.

[@libertystuffnthingsreviews829]

There is a TimeSuck podcast on it.

[@quigglebert]

New Mexico was savagery beyond the pale

[@MrIansmitchell]

Lady White Rabbit has a video on it that's quite good.

[@Pseedholm]

@@MrIansmitchell you have low standards for “good”. I just watched it, it’s 8 minutes of monotone and superficial facts.

[@JillLulamoon]

Anyone is curious, here's a great documentary kzbin.info/www/bejne/aX6QmYOmqqakrbM

[@derpinguin7003]

Part of my family was held in gulags for up to ten years. Most died, only my grandfather was released home, just to be deported by the Romanian government for another couple of years into the baragan plains. The Soviet states were not better than hitler, but nobody seems to acknowledge that.

[@hectorsmommy1717]

My friend's father spent time in a gulag. He participated in the 1956 revolution in Hungary and was repatriated 4 years later. Her mother was pregnant with her when he left so she didn't see her father until she was almost school age. I was visiting her in Hungary the week that the last Russian troops left the country and her face as she watched what her father fought for so many years before was so heartbreaking. He died about 15 years after repatriation but never really recovered.

[@_audacity2722]

And now Hungary is a fascist sh!thole 🤡 💩 🤡

[@hectorsmommy1717]

@@_audacity2722 The Russians just left and there was no infrastructure or self governing. They did not have a strong central character like Havel or Lech Walesa to hold things together while they built. Maria was telling me that the first to gain money were the drug dealers and pornographers, which then led to rampant corruption. The next stage is the "law and order" stage which easily attracts fascists. They were allowed to continue and now run the country. Obviously very simplified but they followed the typical progression to a fascist state.

[@williewonka6694]

Thanks for keeping this information circulating within the public sphere. People need to see and understand how and why this happens.

[@wormbaby666]

Well done, Simon and team. I think this was a very neat and concise piece of writing. This is a horrifying but important piece of history and I think that making the information 'easily' digestable, is also important.

[@perpetualtech5906]

Love your videos! keep up the great work guys!

[@rickytickytimbo9182]

And according to Stranger Things, they're a great way to get get a six pack

[@DanteKenchi]

i've always found it weard how evry history book dedicates a whole chapter to the German holocaust, but no one ever talks about the millions and millions AND millions of ppl who died under the boots of communism/stalinism in the gulags or by NKVD torture. Even the famine in Ukraine (holodomor)

[@tomben6180]

It’s why idiot students pick that evil ideology back up regularly, they aren’t taught what it actually was.

[@Paul-vq8fk]

That's because Jews were involved in the Holodomor. Stalins appointee was the Jew Genrikh Yagoda. Yagoda was also appointed to build the Gulags!!!

[@RickPop85]

I'm a descendent from a gulag survivor. My grandfather survived 10 years

[@fosheimdet]

7:32 "inaccessible over land, prisoners were transported by boats" proceeds to show that the location is surrounded by land

[@shorale5248]

There were camps in places like Kolyma that aren't reachable properly by land because there are no roads or railroads there and the prisoners were moved by train and then put on boats to reach the closest place to drop them off where the ones that survived the journey made the last part of the way on foot. So, I guess that might be the context in this case

[@tkskagen]

So digusting to know that still happens... 🤮

[@badluck5647]

Simon's basement 👀

[@Robert_H_Diver]

China

[@musicilya6674]

@@Robert_H_Diver and North Korea

[@teddyfinerty4279]

One of my terrible hobbies at work is going though lists of Russian intellectuals/ artists/ soldiers on Wikipedia and being like “let’s see what horrible thing happened to them”

[@darktruths133]

This is starting too become one of my favourite channels

[@chrissimiyu5484]

This topic is haunting af to me, Kolyma Tales is one of the few books I've never been able to finish, the suffering described was too much for me...

[@earl_gay]

the fact that so many young Russians don't even know about this is horrifying in itself

[@24934637]

I own a Nagaika (a Russian whip) which allegedly came from one of the gulags (Either a gulag, or one of the German camps of the Second World War). It's got a wooden handle, and 3 leather thongs braided into one. Holding them together at the end, is a small section of artillery shell 'driving band' (sort of copper plate with ridges caused by the internal barrel rifling), which has been hammered round the thongs to hold them together. This whip would have caused horrible cuts into whatever it was used against, it's certainly NOT designed to be used on livestock! Whoever used it was absolutely brutal, and certainly didn't have any love and care in their hearts for the people in their charge!

[@LXNL]

This "Into the Shadows", was DARK!

[@motiejuslipskis6642]

My grandfather (five at the time) was sent to a gulag with his little brother and mother to log timber.

[@universeisundernoobligatio3283]

When Russia invaded Poland, my great grand parents, grand parents and parents we told what is in your stomach is yours the rest is Russias. My family were some of the 5 million Poles were shipped to slave labour camps in Siberia only 4 million came out. Lost family in Siberian slave labour camps.

[@chaosdweller]

Are u talking about my new dissociative disorder I've recently aquired? haha.....

[@chaosdweller]

Dang I'm sorry, ..... interesting though.

[@hxsjdbdjavs]

It's insane that gulag does not get treated the same way as the holocaust.

[@linuxpropaganda]

dude holocaust had fucking gas chambers, how can you even compare

[@TheRockyMountain]

For some reason people want to give Russians a pass for all the horrific crimes committed by Russia. Russia is worse than nazi germany.

[@ardenalexa94]

I agree. Stalin was just as horrible as Hitler.

[@matthmaroo1984]

Love the video and shaker and spoon

[@xXScissorHandsXx]

Hearing Simon try to work out some of these Spanish words is absolutely the best. It's Ah-Nay-ho for the sound although I may adopt this new way like a bad "No Nintendo" 😉

[@BigKeith510]

It is absolutely insane and disgusting how humans will treat each other.

[@Chris-hx3om]

One of the more 'famous' Russian citizens who spent way too much time in a gulag was Sergei Korolev, who later became the head of Russia's space program. He died at just 59 years old, no doubt as a result of the harsh conditions he endured at the gulags.

[@keithprice4711]

Yeah, the BBC did a great series on the Space Race and how The Soviet Union turned to Korolev after America won the race to get Wernher Von Braun in Germany

[@Chris-hx3om]

@@keithprice4711 Yep, it was called "Space Race". Produced in 2005, and probably one of the best accounts of the space race. A way underrated series.

[@jaevindear2272]

Now a word from our sponsor. *begins to savagely rummage through box* love you whistle man But off to gulag you go 😂

[@blackterminal]

Thanks for the video.

[@mrandersson2009]

Any chance for someone to dub this episode in Russian? It would be very useful to spread the word to those who need it the most.

[@marktg98]

I think KZbin is banned in Russia right now, so not much use in that unfortunately, except for those who have a vpn

[@slavakotam3121]

Believe me we know and remember our terrible history

[@gunnara6044]

Well it happened to Russians so i dont know what that would achieve

[@blarfroer8066]

Russian kids are being indoctrinated and they wouldn't watch this video either way. Adult Russians, who went to school before Putin know about the Gulags and with almost 1/3 of the entire population of the USSR having been in a Gulag a lot of Russians personally know someone who spent time there.

[@mrandersson2009]

@@gunnara6044 As expressed in the video this part of history is being suppressed from the educational system in Russia, therefore it makes sense.

[@skyhawk_4526]

Reagan wasn't using hyperbole when he called the USSR "The Evil Empire." This was still going on when all of our grandparents were alive. The gulags are gone, but Russia and its leadership have not changed all that much in the time since the days of the gulags. At least the evils of slavery in America were put to an end about 100 years before the gulags were. Keep this in mind the next time you are wanting to criticize the West. Yeah, there's room for Western criticism. But keep it in perspective. In the West we are ashamed of those dark times. In Putin's Russia, they venerate those times, and they purposely hide the realities of it from their citizens. Let that sink in for a moment. No cultures are perfect. But some are certainly better than others. So many in the West are completely ignorant to this reality while they complain about their own countries despite having no consideration for the real suffering that went on and continues to go on in other parts of the world that they like to pretend are superior to the West. Maybe you should ask a gulag survivor about that, and where they would have preferred to live, and where they'd prefer their children to live.

[@BigSnipp]

Evil is a facile term. Russia was horrid beyond words. That doesn't excuse the US's horrors.

[@lucisferre6361]

Mr. Whistler, as I watch your well presented lessons on such grim, important topics, I can't help but hope that your memory is less effective than my own, especially due to the extra exposure you must endure while performing research & composing content. Thank you.

[@shailonnoelle7175]

My grandpa escaped the gulags twice On foot, of course, through crazy blizzards men dropping around him, they were unprepared, he made it to France joined the underground resistance got caught after awhile got sent back to the gulag escaped again in 1944 made it back to England and started a family had 7 kids my moms the 7th. Crazy how we get here in life, the situations ppl made it through to then pass on their seed and bring you life.

[@just-give-me-a-handle-you]

hey Simon, question. Why isn't this released also as a podcast?

[@andrewrivera1054]

The gulags brought to you by shaker spoon.

[@TheEvilCommenter]

Good video 👍

[@Mrgunsngear]

Thanks

[@moeistired2398]

I love watching Simon's videos because no matter what country you live in, the history you learn in schools is sheltered and bias. I hate that the government saves itself by restricting what is put in our textbooks. If the government did something bad, it will take you a while to learn about it. I vaguely remember doing a project on the concentration camps in America during the world wars and my classmates being baffled because they would have never thought that America would do such a thing.

[@cvn6555]

Internment camps. They were interned, not tortured, not worked to death, not starved to death.

[@arnowisp6244]

@@cvn6555 Already you just showed how Bias the framing was.

[@arnowisp6244]

Internment NOT concentration camps. Calling those concentration camps insults the memory of those who were in concentration camps.

[@jakegreen5682]

Simon. I recently discovered you and all your content/channels. I can’t thank you enough for giving me seemingly endless entertainment. I listen to you sometimes all day in my ear buds at work. Great interesting content. And I like how you keep it more professional and I don’t know if I’m using this right becusee I’m a American, excuse me if not, but less cheeky. Thanks Simon god bless

[@ilovemydad1416]

Bekuzy? Fellow unsuber?

[@rogerroger9960]

It's poetic how Stalin arrested all the top doctors, then most likely died from a lack of medical care. 😂

[@sned_music]

I've recently finished listening to the audio version of the Gulag Archipelago. It took me a year and a half to get through it - far longer than any previous reading or listening journey - because it was just so heartbreaking, real, confronting and unbelievable. One of the most profound reading experiences and realisations of my life. Even though it is so terrible, I humbly recommend that all who can read it, should read it. It provides an entirely unique vantage point into group psychology, and the pathology of the human condition. Knowledge and comprehension of this time human history should be precursor to psychological and thus political discussion. We should each know what we as a species are capable of, and never repeat it again.

[@heavenlydaotv3777]

It will happen again.

[@soul_Link12]

Yeah, communism sounds like a grrrrrreat idea 🙄

[@SpaceMonkeyBoi]

Can't wait to see some SSR fan boy's in the comments going "but the west" while simultaneously trying to justify the gulags. "Just don't be a Kulak and you'll be fine."

[@ayanomar1408]

it never stops to baffel me the amount of pain and suffering humans can inflict on one another

[@thomasroberts3959]

The photo at 11:33 isn't a gulag photo, it's a Holocaust photo. You can recognize the person in the middle row at the far right as Elie Wiesel, a Jewish teen at that time who went on to write multiple books about his experience.

[@jamielandis4308]

The concept has its origins with the Tsars. They would exile criminals, problematic citizens, etc to Siberia to “count trees.” Of course, leave it to the Sovs to make them hellish instead of just boring.

[@DSS-jj2cw]

11:34 is a photo from the holocaust

[@vice.nor.virtue]

This is one of the subjects that I knew once I learned about it, I'd wish I hadn't but knew it was important that I had.

[@dukeavearl]

I got ASMR tingles when he was rummaging through the box of drink stuff

[@Anti-Taxxer]

To anyone who claims "real communism" has never been tried before... that's as real as communism gets.

[@toddhowarddd]

The system doesn't matter in this case. It is simply evil incarnate. No mater what system of government you use evil people will try to exploit it. If you reach any other conclusion you are naïve. If you think this couldn't happen in a non communist country you are just being purposely ignorant.

[@cbbees1468]

@@mooseduck You're probably a Leftist who thinks men can get pregnant and cannot define a recession.

[@Anti-Taxxer]

@@mooseduck No, it is real communism because it killed like real communism. Communism is an economic and social cancer. No, more than that; it is terminal economic and social cancer. It can only be implemented through force and violence. It inevitably leads to death and misery. Forcing people to give up their property and sending those who refuse to deadly work camps is what *real* communism looks like. I know it doesn't look like the fairy tale of "selfless cooperation" that you were suckered into believing, but that is reality for you. I don't know why that is so hard for people like you to understand.

[@candlestyx8517]

@@mooseduck You're missing the key point in his comment "As real as communism gets". Real Communism just like free market Capitalism have never existed, human desire for power and control get in the way

[@cleanerben9636]

@@mooseduck "everyone telling me I'm wrong are just people I don't like anyway." You'll never learn. History is being revised all the time too. That's the point of history lol

[@vic5015]

Simpn, please do a video on what is known about the North Korean forced labor camps.

[@craigbiggam2111]

They exist. That's about it 🤷‍♂️

[@jwenting]

and the Chinese, where 90% of the cheap consumer goods sold in the west are produced...

[@vic5015]

@@craigbiggam2111 there are stories from people who claim to have been in them. Being skeptical is certainly warranted, though.

[@omnigar9611]

I just love how enthusiastic you are about rampant alcoholism.

[@johnknight9150]

That is good news, I'm glad this was sponsored by Shaker & Spoon! Now, salve labour gulags...

[@lexiheart6558]

Wasn't REAL communism. I should know. I just started learning about it in college a week ago , so I'm pretty much an expert.

[@WasabiSniffer]

just when I think soviet history couldn't get darker, simon posts something

[@leonardosaffier1705]

After the soviet invasion of eastern poland in 1939, as accorded by the molotov-ribbentrop pact, the soviets shipped millions of polish people to the gulags as well

[@1pcfred]

Hard work is its own reward.

[@sharonrigs7999]

Communists: " It will work this time! "

[@chaosdweller]

Lmao!

[@malicant123]

Been spendin' most our lives Livin' in a workers' paradise My kids starve so we eat mice Livin' in a workers' paradise

[@calexander7495]

I'm an educated fool with revolution on my mind Got a little red book in my hand and a gleam in my eye

[@malicant123]

And the man himself has passed away :(

[@trudy101]

He seems like he was a kid on Christmas when opening up that Shaker and Spoon box.

[@wojszach4443]

Tho those camps are still active to some extent, past stalin it was still kept as prison and even now you can be send to "colony" for capitulation

[@joeyr7294]

Jesus I dont know which to watch...two of my fave Whistlerverse channels post at once.....what to....I guess nothing for the next 2 hrs but give Simon and Co that sweet sweet watch time!🍻💯