New Sources on Mortality Statistics of the Soviet Penal System, 1917-1953

• In Event: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Soviet Statistical Records as a Source: Uses and Methodological Challenges

Abstract

The core thesis of this paper runs like this. There is massive untapped potential to quantify the health statistics of the Soviet penal system between 1917 and 1953 more precisely, using previously overlooked archival data. Whereas scholars disagree about the magnitudes of this understatement, it is already clear that one can plausibly hypothesize about hundreds of thousands and even millions of yet unaccounted deaths, omitted from the summary reports published in the 1990s.
This paper delineates prospective lines of inquiry, focusing on sources of understatements. They encompass the prisons of the 1920s; the GUITU subsystems of Commissariats of Justice between 1930 and 1934; medically released invalids from the GULAG camps, prisons, and colonies; medically discharged special settlers; deaths spuriously listed as escapes; Labour Army Internees, demobilized due to ill health, and several others.

Author

• Mikhail Nakonechnyi, U of Helsinki (Finland)