Interesting video on the side effects of Stalin's Gulags
(www.youtube.com)
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This actually makes perfect sense after reading "Immigration and Cultures" by Thomas Sowell.
He specifically cited that migrant populations will tend to take not only their knowledge, culture, and traditions from that specific place and time that they left with them.
In essence, all that makes up human capital are actually pulled with the migrants.
He also noted that systemic and institutional discrimination against these immigrant groups does not necessarily change or diminish their human capital.
Now, I think both he and I agree that there would be some limit to that, as human potential can be degraded through enough systematic abuse. But the point still stands that some abuse is not simply enough to diminish human capital, which each individual may find is one of their most important features for overcoming such abuse.
If we were then to selectively intentionally relocate high-human-capital individuals and condense them into a concentration camp, and even expose them to abuse, the human capital they took with them into the concentration camp still remained.
That's probably what happened here. They used their human capital (in the form of ingenuity, discipline, and long term time preference) to survive the gulags and maintain sanity, then managed to leave the gulags and recover from the ordeal while keeping their wits about them the whole way.
This is also proof that as devastating as communism is, it can't necessarily be destroy the foundations of civilization without total genocide.
TLDR: The Lotus Eaters podcast discusses a recent research finding regarding the Soviet Gulags. Apparently, putting all of the interesting and smart people in one place for being "counter-revolutionaries" resulted in those areas becoming hubs of culture and education once the gulags opened up (since the people who were put in couldnt really leave) that still benefit from that fact decades later.
Also, commies still absolutely seething over this fact, and they hung an effigy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the Gulag museum in Moscow in protest (as he is a liar, obviously).
Not shown in this video, but in the wrap up, one of the comments points out how there is some parallel in the fact that the dissident movements and alt-tech are becoming the hubs of culture in the modern era, while "mainstream" culture is becoming dull and stagnant.
Maybe this is related to why they declared such a war on it and demanded to invade it.
Also, can we note the irony of the pinkos saying "The Gulags weren't bad, but we'd totally hang Solzhenitsyn.
This is literally the Soviet version of "The Holocaust didn't happen but it should have"
Because much like the ethno-nats at large (and the Nazi types specifically), they know that if they were serious about their beliefs, the average normie would balk at it. But while the pinkos are better at lying about their intentions, sometimes they seethe so hard that they let slip that they are as evil as they think you are.
Also, I agree with your larger post in this thread as the most likely outcome of this. I just find it extremely funny/ironic that even while they are actively oppressing their chosen enemies, their enemies still find a way to outperform the commies by merely existing. Unironically, Communism is the very definition of failure.
The GULag is singular word, the administration agency. "Gulags" is like saying "Scotland Yards" to mean different police stations in London.
Good to know. I thought that "gulag" was the name of the camps, not the administration in charge of them.