From: no_offline_contact@example.com   
      
   On 2026-01-09 4:36 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
   > Inspired by the other thread to do some reading, did you know there was   
   > such a thing as jurisprudence in the USSR? If you were executed under   
   > the Stalin regime, you could be confident that proper procedure was   
   > followed.   
   >   
   You must be being sarcastic. The one thing you could be sure of is that   
   the Soviet justice system was anything BUT just. Solzhenitsyn's Gulag   
   Archipelago is the gold standard on this but it's three volumes and   
   close to 2000 pages so that may be more than you're willing to take on.   
   (I've read it three times now and HIGHLY recommend it as having done   
   more to educate me about the real world than anything else I've ever read.)   
      
   Picture a trial that lasted just 10 or 15 minutes, with no defence   
   attorney present or allowed. (Show trials were the exception in that   
   they pretended to permit a defence attorney, although many of them   
   openly expressed their contempt for their clients in open court and   
   their desire that their client should get the maximum penalty allowed by   
   law.) A typical trial was in front of a "troika", a panel of three men   
   (although there were often just two) who basically noted that you had   
   confessed (after intensive torture, although they probably didn't   
   mention that bit) and announced the sentence, which might be an   
   immediate execution or a long stint in the camps.   
      
   It should also be mentioned that it wasn't necessary to have actually   
   DONE SOMETHING to be sentenced to the Gulag: merely being related to   
   someone who had confessed to something was sufficient. Stalin's   
   "justice" system had no hesitation in sending parents, grandparents,   
   spouses, aunts and uncles, or children of confessed criminals to the   
   Gulag for several years. (Very young children would get sent to brutal   
   orphanages were they were eventually recruited to join the secret police   
   in many cases, often as some of the cruelest officers).   
      
   > Here's a blog post talking about the guy who wrote the book that every   
   > lawyer in training read.   
   >   
   > https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2024/02/old-legal-theories-given-a-new-life/   
   >   
   Vyshinky was among the vilest of the vile people that surrounded Stalin.   
      
   > I would like my own copy to pound the clue through the skull of anyone   
   > apologizing for socialism demanding that more and more of it be   
   > implemented in the West. This is the most disturbing thing I've read all   
   > day.   
      
   If you read it, Gulag Archipelago will be the most disturbing thing   
   you've read in your entire LIFE. My brother had little interest in   
   politics - although some in history - and he read the whole thing. He   
   wasn't one to talk much on the phone and even less so when it was long   
   distance but he called me long distance after he read it and we had an   
   extensive chat about it; it had moved him that much.   
      
   Robert Conquest's book, The Great Terror (especially the 30th   
   anniversary revision and probably the 40th anniversary revision) are   
   considerably shorter if you want to get a sense of the times without   
   reading so much. Conquest was an Anglo-American historian who, as a   
   young man, had joined the (British) Communist Party about the same time   
   as Kim Philby (while also at Cambridge) but who eventually soured on   
   Communism and wrote many books on the history of Soviet communism. The   
   revised editions of the Great Terror are especially good because he was   
   able to confirm a lot of things that had only been informed speculation   
   in the original version due to the opening of the Soviet archives to   
   Western researchers.   
      
   --   
   Rhino   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)