this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
639 points (97.3% liked)

Today I Learned

26015 readers
351 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] hcf@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 day ago (11 children)

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.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

Peak U.S. incarceration rate

The average imprisonment rate in the Soviet Union

Uh-huh. Not like that rings the statistics manipulation alarm at all or anything.

«Is normal, ignore that товарисщ»

Some Soviet incarceration rates between 1934 and 1953 were likely the highest ever recorded for a modern nation.

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?

[–] hcf@sh.itjust.works 0 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Uh-huh. Not like that rings the statistics manipulation alarm at all or anything.

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.

Did uhhh... did you mean to paste this bit or forget to trim it before you posted? Is the US not a "modern nation?"

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.

«Is normal, ignore that товарисщ»

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.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 hours ago

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.

load more comments (8 replies)