After Russian officials bemoaned the collapse of migrant labor in the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the country¡¯s prison service offered a solution: reviving the Soviet-era practice of putting convicts to work. Just don¡¯t call it a gulag.
An association with one of the darkest chapters of the Communist past hasn¡¯t deterred top bureaucrats, who¡¯ve taken up the idea with enthusiasm. Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin recalled he once worked with prisoners at a brickmaking factory as he told an RBC news interviewer Friday that he¡¯s in talks on using convicts at construction sites, a plan also endorsed by Industry Minister Denis Manturov.
¡°This won¡¯t be a gulag, it will be completely new and decent conditions¡± for the prisoners involved, Alexander Kalashnikov, head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, told human rights officials last month, the state-run RIA Novosti news service reported. Nearly 190,000 of Russia¡¯s 483,000 prisoners would be eligible, though participation should be voluntary, he said.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.