Stalin didn't create a seamless terror state-he created an incompetent one

[n2doc]

Stalin didn't create a seamless terror state
Dictator repressed nonexistent conspiracies
Matthew Yglesias
Sunday, September 24, 2006


Say what you will about Joseph Stalin, but at least the man ran a top-notch crime control apparatus. Freed of the petty constraints of due process and human rights, the crack investigative team at the KGB ran down leads swiftly and diligently. When they found someone with information, they tortured him, quickly generating accurate information and keeping the authorities ahead of the curve. Stalin's Soviet Union had its problems: bad weather, economic deprivation, a certain absence of political freedom, etc. But the criminal justice system -- that was solid.

Well, no.

It wasn't like that at all. Pervasive surveillance, an absence of due process and widespread use of torture, shockingly enough, didn't create an effective law enforcement system. Instead, you got the madness of the Great Purge. Thousands upon thousands of supposed traitors and saboteurs were arrested and sent away to the gulag for, essentially, no reason at all. Rather than the Soviet security forces serving as a hyper-effective mechanism for rooting out a conspiracy, the utter absence of restraint on those forces led to mass repression of a conspiracy that didn't even exist.

From the regime's perspective, this arrangement wasn't pointless by any means. The prisoners were made to do forced labor and got a lot of work done. The population was cowed and terrorized. And while the widespread deployment of torture didn't generate anything in the way of accurate information, it did generate confessions by the bushel. Confessions were, of course, precisely what Stalin was after, as they validated the existence of the alleged conspiracy that justified the purge. The system worked, after a fashion, but it certainly didn't work as a system for solving crimes or cracking conspiracies. It worked as a component of the dictator's imposition of totalitarian rule on the country.

Which is all just to say that there are two closely related reasons we find the idea of torture depraved. On the one hand, the deliberate infliction of cruelty is simply a depraved act. On the other hand, though, it's simply the sort of thing that only depraved people do -- as an actual investigative technique, it sucks. It's a way of encouraging people to tell interrogators whatever it is the interrogators already happen to believe. This is why you don't see torture associated with low-crime jurisdictions. You see it associated with brutal dictatorships seeking to cow the population. You see it associated with purges, witch hunts and inquisitions. Wherever phony confessions are required as an instrument of policy, you'll find your torture chambers.
more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/09/24/INGQ3LAA4A1.DTL

[xchrom]

1. i am slowly re-working my way through gulag archipelago --

the similarities between the stalinist soviet empire and contemporary america is striking.

you would never think that in america selection 00 would be tolerated -- and now the torture bill and the subsequent loss of habeus corpus -- the increased protections for bushco.

the striking difference of course is the apathy created by the mega corporations, television and lusting for suvs and flat screen tvs.