Political prisoners working in a gulag
They were arrested, tortured and forced to do forced labor. Still, they stayed there, even after being released. And that was the best thing that could have happened for the region.
Gulags were forced labor camps where political prisoners from the Soviet Union were exiled. Those who occupied them were mainly intellectuals considered “enemies of the people”who were therefore removed to these remote and completely isolated places — that is, of course, when they were not killed.
But even those who were not killed immediately by the Soviets could very well be killed by the miserable conditions in which they worked — the gulags were concentration camps where, like those in World War II, they were held. torture of prisoners.
At the height of Stalin’s Great Terror (1936-1938), more than 1.5 million people were arrested, half of whom were executed, according to . The rest went to the gulags.
In these fields, 1.8% of prisoners had higher educationcompared to just 0.6% of the general Soviet population, since a large portion of political prisoners consisted of intellectuals who challenged the repressive regime.
But, surprisingly, the people who were freed from the gulags after Stalin’s death ended up developing a perverse taste for the place, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome (when the victim falls in love with the kidnapper, or, in this case, the place where he was imprisoned ).
It turns out that, after their release, many intellectuals ended up living nearby of these places, because they have become accustomed to them.
The new one, carried out by Gerhard Toews e Pierre-Louis Vézina now proves that, thanks to the presence of educated and literate intellectuals in these places, due to the forced labor camps, the zones prospered.
The analysis relates the distribution of gulags across Russian territory in 1952 with current indicators between 2000 and 2018.
By way of example, a 28% increase in the percentage of political prisoners in a given location causes the night light intensity per capita increase by 58%, the average salaries 22% and the profits per worker in companies 65%.
“We suggest that the relationship between enemies and modern prosperity is due to long-term persistence of high levels of educationnamely through intergenerational transmission, and its role in increasing company productivity”, say the researchers.
