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U.S. military service members may have been imprisoned and died in Soviet forced-labor camps during the 20th century, according to a Pentagon report to be released Friday.
Researchers for the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs have been investigating unconfirmed reports of Americans who were held prisoner in the so-called gulags.
“I personally would be comfortable saying that the number [of Americans held in the gulags during the Cold War and Korean War] is in the hundreds,” said Norman Kass, executive secretary of the commission’s U.S. section.
The Soviet gulag system remained strong until the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953. But some camps remained in existence for years afterward.
Soviet authorities imprisoned millions who were considered “enemies of the state” and forced them to perform hard labor in the network of camps in remote areas of the country.
The publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” in the early '70s focused the West’s attention on the camps.
For more than a decade, Kass and his team have investigated dozens of reports about Americans spotted in the gulags.
cnn.com/2005/US/02/11/gulag.report/index.html
Researchers for the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs have been investigating unconfirmed reports of Americans who were held prisoner in the so-called gulags.
“I personally would be comfortable saying that the number [of Americans held in the gulags during the Cold War and Korean War] is in the hundreds,” said Norman Kass, executive secretary of the commission’s U.S. section.
The Soviet gulag system remained strong until the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953. But some camps remained in existence for years afterward.
Soviet authorities imprisoned millions who were considered “enemies of the state” and forced them to perform hard labor in the network of camps in remote areas of the country.
The publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” in the early '70s focused the West’s attention on the camps.
For more than a decade, Kass and his team have investigated dozens of reports about Americans spotted in the gulags.
cnn.com/2005/US/02/11/gulag.report/index.html