No, they were also for reactionaries and other criminals, it's literally just the name of the soviet prison bureau.
The gulag system was also way more humane than the modern prison system in the US.
This is why one of the first books I always recommend to new leftists is Blood In My Eye. The US prison system is one of seral focal points for revolutionary organizing. Almost everyone knows someone who went to prison.
In its time the soviet reform to the tsarist gulags was actually regarded as a major step for restorative justice.
Some people just need to breaking rocks for a while, until they re-learn how to be human.
Critiques of incarceration and state authority in socialist states always conveniently ignores any comparisons to the system prior to the revolution (see: Cuba and Bautista).
Because no liberal revolutions ever chopped off any noble heads, nope nope nope. “capital comes [into the world] dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt” - some German guy with a beard that wrote about economics.
They were mostly for regular old boring criminals. Politicals were, idk, 10? 15%? of the prison population?
No, for some reason they just keep coming to Hexbear to post lib shit.
I always wondered why Albert Camus got so butthurt about the Gulags, when the French had the same stuff or even worse back in his times...
