LABOR CAMPS THRIVE DESPITE SOVIET RHETORIC, EXPERTS SAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302330015-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: November 20, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302330015-8
ARTICLE AP2,r J
ON PAGE ~
WASHINGTON TIMES
20 November 1985
AT TMsUmmQr
Labor camps thrive despite Soviet
rhetoric, experts say
By Bill Gertz
VASHINOTON TIMES
The Soviet system of forced labor
and imprisonment is flourishing de-
spite the Soviets' recent efforts to
obscure human rights violations, ac-
cording to experts on the subject.
The Reagan administration con-
tinues to condemn the system, citing
a critical 1983 interagency report,
according to a government official
who asked not to be identified. The
report finds the forced-labor system
to be a prime instance of Soviet fail-
ure to live up to obligations under
international treaties and conven-
tions.
"In maintaining its extensive
forced labor system to serve both the
political and economic purposes of
the state, the government of the So-
viet Union ... is contravening the
U.N. Charter and failing to fulfill its
solemn undertakings in the Univer-
sal Declaration of Human Rights
and the Anti-Slavery Convention of
1926:' the report says.
The report says the Soviets are
holding 4 million political prisoners
and other criminals in the labor
camps. In the Soviet Union,
criticizing the state is a crime pun-
ishable by up to 10 years in a labor
camp.
President Reagan is expected to
bring up the subject of Soviet rights
abuses in meetings today in Geneva.
"An essential element of the ad-
ministration's concern is that the So-
viets' use of forced labor for political
and economic purposes violates fun-
damental human rights," said the of-
ficial.
The Soviets have mounted a
"counter-human rights campaign" to
distract attention at the summit
from Soviet rights abuses, accord-
ing to Georgetown University Pro-
fessor Roy Godson. The Soviets have
accused the United States of violat-
ing the rights of Jews, blacks, Amer-
ican Indians and migrant farm la-
borers.
A new Soviet pamphlet says Jews
in the Soviet Union are treated bet-
ter than any other nation, according
to Herbert Romerstein, an expert on
Soviet propaganda at the U.S. Infor-
mation Agency. The pamphlet,
which amplifies remarks made in
France recently by Soviet leader Mi-
khail Gorbachev, also contends that
Jews are mistreated in the United
States, Mr. Romerstein said.
"They are obviously counter-
attacking on the human rights issue"
to support their "allegations of the
mistreatment of the [American]
Jews:' Mr. Rommerstein said.
The administration estimates the
Soviets run 1,100 forced labor
camps, but other experts say the
number of camps could be as high as
4,000.
Experts describe the Soviet
forced-labor camp and prison sys-
tem as a vast subculture within So-
viet society. Its inhabitants include
political prisoners - religious be-
lievers, Jews trying to emigrate, dis-
sident scientists and artists - and
other lawbreakers, such as petty
criminals and murderers. They
share a fate in what has become
known as the-Gulag Archipelago, a
term coined by a famous Russian
emigre, writer Aleksandr Sol-
zhenitsyn.
Avraham Shifrin, another leading
chronicler of the Soviet prison camp
system, says in his "Guidebook to
Prisons and Concentration Camps"
that the system consists of more
than 2,000 labor camps in which
most inmates work in freezing tem-
peratures and live on starvation
diets.
Besides the regular camps, Mr.
Shifrin says there are several cate-
gories of special camps.
These include 119 cams for 10- to
18 ear-old males and for women
with children. Fifty-five camps are
'psychiatric hospitals." in these, the
Soviet secret no ice, t ecan
place prisoners or up to three years
without legal orocee in s. orty-
one are "extermination camps:' in
which prisoners are forced to work
at extremely hazardous jobs.
Mr. Shifrin, who says his father
died in a camp for the crime of tell-
ing an anti-Stalin joke, writes that
the extermination camps come in
three varieties. In some camps pris-
oners work in uranium mines and
uranium enrichment plants with no
protective gear. In others, prisoners
work in nuclear weapons plants and
on nuclear submarine reactors. In
others, they mine mica, polish glass
or work with laquer enamels in un-
ventilated areas.
Prisoners who work in the exter-
mination camps "face a virtually
certain death" after several months,
wrote Mr. Shifrin, who spent 10
years in the camp system and now
lives in Israel.
Experts say it is difficult for
Americans to imagine the harshness
of the Soviet prison-camp system
when in the United States convicts
share television sets and can main-
tain bank accounts.
"If such a thing [as the Gulag]
existed here, corresponding to our
population, there would be 2,000
camps into which people disap-
peared, about which no one spoke,
and whose existence we denied con-
stantly to the outside world;' said
Martin.
"Americans can't think like that
until they wander into an Auschwitz
and find the bodies."
Catholic theologian Malachi Mar-
tin, a Vatican expert and author who
spent several years in the Rome
studying the Soviet camp system in
search of banished Soviet Catholics,
said he doubts rights abuses in the
camps will be the subject of a sum-
mit communique because the Soviet
Union would never agree to "revise
its system of death camps."
"The Soviets forbid talk about this
as inimical," Mr. Martin said in an
interview. "They will simply break
the meeting up"
He said the Soviet gulags are not
units of a penal system, but rather
are 2,500 to 3,500 concentration
camps set up to deal with popular
dissent.
A few of the camps are simply
remote villages with impassable
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302330015-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302330015-8
2.
natural borders, he said. These
camps are designed to "prolong life,"
Mr. Martin said.
"But the majority of camps are so
harsh that, as one man said to me,
'The weak never survived,"' Mr.
Martin said. "The hardship was
meant to kill. It's a diabolical sys-
tem
Mr. Martin said the exile of Soviet
nuclear physicist and human rights
advocate Andrei Sakharov was "de
facto prison" in the remote city of
Gorky. Mr. Sakharov's plight is ex-
pected to be a topic of discussion at
the summit.
Mr. Martin said President Rea-
gan's election in 1980 and the advent
of a Polish Pope in Rome led to a
Soviet crackdown on dissent. Sev-
eral Catholic "listening posts" be-
hind the Iron Curtain disappeared
during the last five years, he said.
Television producers David B. Al-
drich and Lorraine Garnett have cor
written a forthcoming documentary
0
"Conspiracy of Silence: Human
Rights in the U.S.S.R?' Using fissures
Aral Sea ?
A
^ A
provided by the Senate Intelligence
Committee and the U -S Helsinki "-
man Rights Commission t esti
mate that there are between 2,
and 4,000 camps. Mr. Aldrich
stressed in an interview that he con-
sidered the figures "conservative:'
Victor Zolatarevski, a Russian
emigre and filmmaker, said in an in-
terview that a summit in Novembe?
1974 between former President Gerr
ald Ford and late Soviet leader Leo-
nid Brezhnev took place near "at
least 11" Soviet labor camps contairt-
ing thousands of prisoners, in
Vladivostok.
"The train in which Ford anJ
Brezhnev held discussions, ate caV`
iar and had a good time was running
along the tracks [between] a string,
of labor camps;' Mr. Zolatarevski'
said.
The Soviet Union, he said, used;
slave labor to build the new phased-
array radar system at Krasnoyarsk,
Siberia. The radar has been an ob-:
stacle to arms talks because it is re-
garded by ? the Reagan administra-
tion as a major violation of the 1972:
Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty. Mr
Shift-in reports that the remote re-
gion contains 68 camps, six prisons'
and two psychiatric prisons.
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A SURVEY OF THE GULAGS
Forced labor and imprisonment continue to flourish as a
vast sub-culture within Soviet society. As many as 4 million
people may be in forced-labor camps.
^A
.
Psychiatric Prisons ?
Extermination Camps ^
Women's and
Children's Camps
PACIFIC
OCEAN
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302330015-8