The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.
Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.
This is wrong and you’re a shitbag liar. Don’t think people don’t see you out here spending your free time floating thread-to-thread just to shit on socialism.
Peak U.S. incarceration rate in 2008 (it’s highest) was about 760 per 100,000 people in the total population. The average imprisonment rate in the Soviet Union during the Gulag era was 714 per 100,000 residents. Some Soviet incarceration rates between 1934 and 1953 were likely the highest ever recorded for a modern nation. More than six million people in the U.S. are now under some form of correctional supervision—more than the number imprisoned in the Gulag at its peak.
Some sources:
Gopnik, Adam (30 January 2012). The Caging of America. The New Yorker.
Applebaum, Anne (2003). Gulag: a history. By Anne Applebaum. ISBN 978-0-7679-0056-0.
Liptak, Adam (28 Feb 2008). 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says. The New York Times.
Getty, J. Arch; Rittersporn, Gabor T.; Zemskov, Viktor N. “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence”.
Rosefielde, Steven (2007). The Russian economy: from Lenin to Putin. By Steven Rosefielde. ISBN 978-1-4051-1337-3.
Can yall please pretty please stop fucking supporting horrible regimes and then also trying to use them as examples of socialism? You’re not helping anyone. You’re literally only hurting the appearance of socialism.
Its like you don’t get that you actually have to sell people on the idea. You certainly won’t convince people with bashing people over the head with delusional or pedantic at best history rewritings/retellings about horrible people.
Those people were bad, socialism is good. Separate the ideas. Everything is better this way.
It’s because some parts of Lemmy are actually just psyops for Russia and China, just like all those facebook groups during the 2016 elections and all those foreign maga influencers outed during a recent leak.
Uh-huh. Not like that rings the statistics manipulation alarm at all or anything.
«Is normal, ignore that товарисщ»
Did uhhh… did you mean to paste this bit or forget to trim it before you posted? Is the US not a “modern nation?” Aren’t you calling the guy who said “soviets locked up more % than current US” a “shitbag liar” while posting evidence that supports his point? The fuck is going on, were you trained on shit data? You need a better prompt or something?
Not really; if you read (lmao) more into it, you’d find that those scholars that I cited argue that it’s preferable to use averages rather than try to get precise YoY level numbers because it’s difficult to source consistent data for several chunks of time and regions.
The “modern nation” reference was talking about the group of post-industrial nations at the time in which the USSR existed. I.e. “for all modernized, non-developing nations at that time”.
But I hear you, fam. Fair criticism. I used two different adjectives to describe the relative parity between the two countries. Silly of me.
But since you also clearly prefer to fling shit rather read a fucking book or two, I’ll distill a line for you that’ll hopefully stick:
At its peak in 1953, the estimated incarceration rate in the USSR was around 1,558 per 100,000.[1]
That’s less than the 2022 US rate calculated by the USBJ statistics I quoted in a separate post. Certainly not double the US’s current incarceration rate. I suppose you’ll bitch about me comparing current US rate to the 1953 rate, but that’s why it’s a fucking rate/per population. Moreover, the point I was making is that the US has gotten worse than the days of the USSR’s Gulags.
But sure. It’s entirely possible I’m just manipulating statistics and providing citations to nefariously dispute—** checks notes **—the guy who spams Stalin memes, gets banned from communities for calling people tankies, and who spouted a random take without any attempt whatsoever to provide supporting evidence.
Go fuck yourself, patriot. :)
[1] E. Belova, P.R. Gregory. “Political economy of crime and punishment under Stalin”. Publ. Choice, 140 (3–4) (2009), pp. 463-478.
Sure, averages are better, but nonetheless instead of being consistent and using the average for both, you use the “peak” of one and “average” of another, as if that doesn’t look suspicious.
I’m not even saying the US doesn’t incarcerate more people per capita, I’m saying using “peak v avg” is a bad system because at best it makes you look like a liar.
Also I’m saying you’re probably a tankie if you’re on lemmy defending the USSR, yeah. Walks like a duck and talks like a duck and all.
Ёб твою мать.
And before you (or anyone else) nitpicks about “BuT tHaT wAS 2008”—that’s because I’m comparing peak periods.
If you want the latest estimates available, and if you really start digging, it looks much worse for the US. The total correctional population in 2022 was estimated to be 5.4 million people (according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics report). The estimated US adult population in 2022 was 260.6 million.
That’d mean that the latest numbers are about 2,072 in 100,000 people.
But sure, shitting on the USSR is a neat trick for downplaying how completely abysmal the US has become.