Author Archives: Kirk Mahoney

A Prison, No Matter What the Soviets Called It

Communists use words not only to obscure what they are doing but also to make others play catch-up with respect to what they are doing. For example, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his book The Gulag Archipelago about how the Soviets had many names for prisons: Year after year other forms of existence for prisoners were also tried, …

Continue reading “A Prison, No Matter What the Soviets Called It”

Communists Hide the Truth with Euphemisms

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his book The Gulag Archipelago about how the Soviets avoided the term prisoners: The population of Ryazan [the location of a concentration camp set up in a former nunnery (Kazansky)] was very sympathetic toward the deprivees, as they were called. (Officially they were called not prisoners but “persons deprived of freedom.”) The Gulag …

Continue reading “Communists Hide the Truth with Euphemisms”