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.