ABSTRACT
During the course of the years 1953-1956, a number of things contributed to a reform of the slave labor system. The reform still left the pressure of some millions of slave laborers hanging over the free labor of the Soviet Union. A labor shortage on both farm and factory had begun, for the "hollowed out years" of forced collectivization, blood purges, and war had caused a great deficit in births. The system of forced labor camps is growing again, no longer for "economic" purposes but for punitive and political purposes, and taking in everything from rebellious youth and juvenile delinquents to adult criminals and politicals including "parasite poets" who refuse to perform "socially useful labor" or who seek to exercise the rights of freedom of press and speech guaranteed to them under the Soviet Constitution. The great strikes in Vorkuta and other camps following Stalin's death, which were broken by a combination of amelioration of conditions and execution of leaders.
