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Sunday, September 7, 2014

Risk Taking Researcher - Joshua Ahn

Book: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Author: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Published: November of 1962



Today i decided to talk about the gulag prisons during the world war II, how they lived in the prisons there and what they did there. Gulag is the soviet bureaucratic institution that operated the system of forced labor camps in the Stalin area. In the eyes of the authorities, a prisoner had almost no value. An unknown number well into the millions died in Gulag Camps.


People suffered a lot there. Those who died of hunger, cold, and hard labor were easily replaced by new prisoners. No one wanted to go there, but there was no choice. The only choice you had was to not commit any serious crime, or not even one little single crime. Robbers, rapists, murderers, and thieves spent their sentences not in prisons but in the Gulag. But not only the ones who committed crimes, some innocent people also went into the gulag prisons because they got caught up in the paranoid clutches of the Soviet secret police.



9 comments:

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  2. Good post Joshua,
    I have been doubting the whole time that I have been reading if Ivan was mistakenly sent to the gulag. After you said that some people were mistakenly put in the gulag I feel like pIvan was mistakenly sent. Some things that help me believe this is that normally people stay in prison for a really long time like 30 - 40 years and since Ivan was only sentenced to stay 10 years I think that since he had not done anything he was just sentenced any time.

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  4. I think that your post is decently good but I think that you should actually make your post more detailed like state where and how did Gulags form. Moreover I think that you missed the part that Gulags are for political prisoners.

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  5. Hi Joshua ,
    I really like your post and the idea you want to express within it but I think you can go further, like expand the idea, you can take examples from the book and add them in there, you also can explain Ivan Deisovich´s feelings and the way he reacted to very situation. There is a thing that I don´t have clear yet do you only have the options of being repressed of did you have more options? This is because the many ways the prisoners where in there and the very different they were, also the prisoners that had died inside of the Gulag

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  6. Joshua,

    I also realized that Ivan was sent there even though he did nothing wrong. I do not think that its right for people to treat someone innocent and someone that isn't the same and equal. Some of them have done horrifying things and deserve the punishment they are receiving, but on the other hand, the innocent people like Ivan, are getting punished for nothing at all. The innocent people are dying because of starvation, hard labor, the coldness, and many more reasons. If you were taken, as you said, you had to stay there. Even though it was mistake, you are forced to stay there until your time is done even if you did something wrong or not.

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  7. Do you think that the reason why the innocent also got thrown it to jail was for fear? I think that the government threw people at random into these gulags to strike fear into the hearts of the people. I think this because during world war two there were many conflicts with all of the sides and i think russia wanted to outdo all the other side and show they were the toughest. Logically throwing random people makes people scared of you but then you people get scared of you so then you have a really high chance of getting over thrown.

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  8. Great post Joshua. I didn't know that the prisoners were easily replaced, and that the prisoners die all sorts of things. I really liked when you said that even innocent people got caught up in the paranoid clutches of the Soviet Union secret police because it shows how fast the police react without thinking its the right person, or not.

    If you were taken in by the secret police, what would be your reaction?

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  9. Joshua,

    Nice post. I liked your analysis and connection. I found it very informative. Why do your think that the camps were so harsh on the innocent? It seems like they treated the murderers, rapists, and thieves the same as the ones who had insulted an official or had simply taken some extra bread. Do you think it is because the Soviet Union actually made mistakes, or do you think it is because they just wanted more labor, and therefore more fruit?
    They may also be throwing innocent people in these gulags to show their power. Maybe they simply do this to use these innocent people as examples, so that the rest of the people will be terrified of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the people will not commit any crimes for fear that they will be thrown into gulags.

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