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Review of The Stalinist Penal System from the Small Press Book Review. The Stalinist Penal System - A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror, 1930-1953 by J. Otto Pohl. McFarland and Co., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640. 1997. 168 pp. $35.00 hardcover (0-7864-0336-5). tables; appendix; glossary; bibliography; notes; index. (Communist Russia) With 76 tables, this work is largely a statistical record of the prisoners and activities of the Soviet Gulag under Stalin, as the subtitle denotes. With data compiled from recently-opened Soviet archives, it is a detailed record. Statistics attest to the numbers of political prisoners, women, juveniles, and prisoners of different nationalities, as well as executions, lengths of sentences, and deaths in captivity. Pohl's commentary surrounding the many tables casts light on the human realities inherent in the statistics, puts the statistics into perspective and compares them, and ocassionally describes conditions and activities in the camps. Not really for the general reader, but an invaluable sourcebook for anyone interested in Stalinist Russia, especially its vast prison system. The author is a historian and freelance writer. A review of my second book, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 written by Debbie Beick can be found at the German-Russian Heritage Collection at NDSU.
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