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==Rehabilitation==

==Rehabilitation==

Under [[Nikita Khrushchev]] over 6 million Gulag prisoners were released in 1953-57. These victims of the Stalinist terror encountered physical, psychological, social, and political problems upon their return to Soviet society. A reciprocal adjustment had to be made by the Soviet system, and society as a whole, in order to reintroduce former prisoners to the 'Big Zone,' or life outside the camps. The process of rehabilitation was slowed by the victims' disorientation on return and their fear of further repression. A greater problem was the government's denial of its history rather than admitting to Stalinist-era mistakes. Even after Khrushchev's 1956 secret speech to the 20th Party Congress, the state was slow to acknowledge that many former 'enemies of the people' were in fact innocent victims.<ref>Nanci Adler, "Life in the 'Big Zone': the Fate of Returnees in the Aftermath of Stalinist Repression," ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 1999 51(1): 5-19</ref>

Under [[Nikita Khrushchev]] over 6 million Gulag prisoners were released in 1953-57. Millions of these were [[German]] [[POW]]s (the [[leftist]] Soviet Union was not a signatory of the [[Geneva Convention]] agreeing to the [[humanitarian]] treatment of prisoners when [[World War II]] broke out). [[Aleksander Solzhenitsyn]], who served as a [[Red Army]] Captain in the War Against Fascism, who defeated [[fascism]], nonetheless remained imprisoned by the leftist regime for criticizing socialist management of the war, foreign policy, the economy, and social justice in private letters to friends which had been intercepted by the government domestic [[surveillance]] system.

 

These victims of the Gulag terror encountered physical, psychological, social, and political problems upon their return to Soviet society. A reciprocal adjustment had to be made by the Soviet system, and society as a whole, in order to reintroduce former prisoners to the 'Big Zone,' or life outside the camps. The process of rehabilitation was slowed by the victims' disorientation on return and their fear of further repression. A greater problem was the government's denial of its history rather than admitting to Stalinist-era mistakes. Even after Khrushchev's 1956 secret speech to the 20th Party Congress, the state was slow to acknowledge that many former 'enemies of the people' were in fact innocent victims.<ref>Nanci Adler, "Life in the 'Big Zone': the Fate of Returnees in the Aftermath of Stalinist Repression," ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 1999 51(1): 5-19</ref>

==Further reading==

==Further reading==