desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins) (03/24/86)
In article <7801092@inmet> janw@inmet.UUCP writes: > >>> In "The First Guidebook to U.S.S.R. Prisons and Concentration >>> Camps," Avraham Shifrin superimposed the pipeline route with >>> wonderful precision on a map of the camps. [ 141 ] > > > So at last we have the evidence. Did he happen by any chance to > >superimpose either of these with railroad maps? I'll bet they match > >with "wonderful precision." Or does the fact that the camps are near > >the rail lines mean that the prisoners were forced to build those too? :-) > >The joke is somehow lost on me. What does the smiling face smile at? >That many railroad lines in Russia *were* built by prisoners; >that many of these died in the process? No, the :-) refers to the rather obvious reversal of cause and effect. How did the prisoners get where they are? On the railroads of course. The prison camps are there because that is the 1% of Siberia that is even accessible. You can't get to the places where there are no railroads, so it is not so surprising that there are no prisoners and no pipelines in those places. >But to the point: where the railroads are already built, the >prisoners must be busy on something else. (They don't just >*loaf* in Soviet labor camps). Along the pipeline route, for the >most part, the pipeline must be the project in most need of la- >bor. Therefore, the map evidence is quite compelling. But can't you see that this "evidence" is completely circumstantial? If the USSR decided, "We are not going to use forced labor on the pipeline because it would not be that useful and it would be bad propagandistically" (which seems quite possible to me), your "evidence" would be unaffected. It is not unreasonable to have the a priori expectation that the USSR might be using forced labor on the pipeline. What is unreasonable is to claim that your reasons for the expectation are in fact "evidence" for the actual truth of these allegations. >David DesJardins argues as if the *existence* of forced labor in >the USSR were in question; whereas the debate is merely over >where it is used. I have no doubt that there is forced labor in the USSR. There is forced labor in the US as well. There are probably even prisons in Alaska (or are there no criminals there?). No doubt some of these prisons are near the Alaska pipeline. But I doubt that any forced labor was used on its construction. >Projects of this kind: labor-consuming, far from population >centers - have always used prisoner labor in the USSR. One should >need strong evidence to believe this one is an exception. I do not "believe this one is an exception." I harbor a reasonable doubt based on the fact that I have seen no evidence. Note also that in order to support your claim about a single instance you are making a much broader claim which is correspondingly harder to prove. And even if you *could* prove this *broader* statement it still would not prove anything about this particular case! -- David desJardins