
Haunting message penned from Soviet 'slaves' found buried in Urals theatre - Thevet
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0241-haunting-message-penned-in-nail-polish-from-soviet-slaves-found-buried-in-urals-theatre/
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staunch
> _Hello, future generation! And may your era have no slavery and no
> humiliation of man by man._ > _Cheers from us,_ > _Prisoners I.L.Kozhin,
> P.G.Sharipov, U.N.Nigmatulin._

Feels good to have heard their words. Too bad we can't respond.

~~~
shanusmagnus
I was going to say the opposite -- feels shitty to read that and see that it's
still happening, though I guess I could take comfort in that it's less
prevalent now.

~~~
Semiapies
I'm just glad they've finally been heard.

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

~~~
sologoub
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.

~~~
gcv
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)](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.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
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.

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mattgibson
I wonder if in years to come, there will be similar stories when messages from
enslaved foreign tech workers are found buried in leaked source code.

~~~
knodi123
probably not.

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mempko
Is this a good time to talk about the US prison labour system we have now?
Where many are forced to work. I guess if you give them pennies on the dollar,
they are not slaves right?

EDIT: Judging from the down votes, I guess it is not a good time. Maybe
tomorrow?

~~~
mikeash
No, this is not a good time to talk about the US prison labor system. If you
have an interesting link about that topic, submit it and maybe it'll get
upvoted. But don't just find a topic that's vaguely similar and hijack it.

~~~
badloginagain
I think it's valid to take a discovery of human slavery in the past and
compare it to slavery in the present. Be it mines using forced labor, sexual
slavery, forced prison work, etc.

Hijacking? It's seems a natural on-topic comment to me.

