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the gulag held 2.5 million at their height in the 1950s, and that’s not even counting anyone pre-trial or adjusting for the population difference between 1950s Soviet Union and modern day USA
These numbers have been challenged by many scholars, Parenti does a great job dissecting these claims in Blackshirts and Reds. You basically cherry pick the numbers you want for USSR while downplaying the numbers in US to make your argument.
Call me stupid all you want, do you still think incarceration vs. correctional supervision is splitting hairs?
I think that you're intentionally playing with the numbers to make your argument work.
Fine, we are both picking figures. If you think the numbers I gave are wrong, give me sourced numbers about the same thing that are right.
Chapter 5 here, references at the end of the book, can also read chapter 6 showing how incarceration rate jumped up dramatically after transition to capitalism https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf
Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976.[3]
[3] By way of comparison, in 1995, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the United States there were 1.6 million in prison, three million on probation, and 700,000 on parole, for a total of 5.3 million under correctional supervision (San Francisco Chronicle, 7/1/96).
I don't think labor camps and prison are comparable to probation and parole. Do you still want to include probation and parole? If not, I think we can safely conclude that the Soviet Union was much more authoritarian. (If you adjust it by capita, you'd have a US prison population of 1.03 million Soviet heads, which is only a few ten thousands more than half the Soviet population.) If yes, why?
As I've already stated repeatedly, I see exclusion of parole completely arbitrary. You could argue that it's not equivalent certainly, but you can't just dismiss it. And again, we're comparing peak incarceration rate in USS right after the revolution with incarceration in US when its functioning regularly. The fact that USSR numbers drop significantly over time while US numbers do not, is what's really key here.
As I've already stated repeatedly, I see exclusion of parole completely arbitrary. You could argue that it's not equivalent certainly, but you can't just dismiss it.
All you've said about it before was that you thought it was "splitting hairs" once. What do you suppose we do with probation then? Is there a Soviet purge-era equivalent with a measure we can compare?
we're comparing peak incarceration rate in USS right after the revolution with incarceration in US when its functioning regularly
Well, that's what we sought to compare. Both you and EgoCom claimed stuff like "US incarceration rate is higher than what USSR had during Stalin's purges".
The fact that USSR numbers drop significantly over time while US numbers do not, is what's really key here.
It's hard to have numbers drop a frick ton when you've had no arbitrary purging of ideas that led to gulag-levels of arrests.
We're just going in circles here, and it's pretty clear that we're not going to convince each other of anything. So, I'm going to leave it at that. Have a good day.