One of the unique aspects of the Soviet camp system, in contrast to the Nazi camps in Germany, is that its inmates arrived via the legal system. Applebaum writes that by the middle of the 1920's, people were no longer picked up off the streets and thrown in jail without investigations, trials, and sentences; however, the crimes for which people were arrested for were ambiguous, and the procedures of investigation and trials were absurd. At various points in time, different groups were targeted for arrest, including engineers and specialists in the 1920's, kulaks in the 1930's, Poles and Balts in the 1940's, and anyone deemed a "foreigner" in the 1930's and 1940's. Foreign communists in particular were often targets for arrest and conviction, and at times anyone suspected of having a.....
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