Soviet Dumping

33

carried out, Huge State farms have been established at the
expense of the individual peasant, and the State exercises
its ““ right *’ to decree all forms of compulsory labour. Even
members of collective farms are ‘ summoned to work,”
and are dispatched to any district for compulsory labour on
the land and in the forests.
Finally, the Soviets make the fullest possible use of the
various forms of prison labour as is clearly shown in the
numerous paragraphs in the Labour and Criminal Codes.
Among the sentences given in the judicial reports,
‘ compulsory labour in the undertaking ” is very frequent,
whilst the Criminal Code ” provides that every prison and
convict settlement must “ work on an economic basis,”
and that every prisoner and convict, even under sentence of
“isolated imprisonment,” must ‘ produce” for his own
upkeep. This has never been denied by the Soviet authorities.

Moreover the system of “exile” as punishment for a
variety of offences, is regulated in such a manner as to
provide concentration or internment camps of exiles, under
the control of the Ogpu, the Soviet Political Police. The
prisoners are organised as ‘labour gangs” for various
industrial and other enterprises. The mass of prison-made
goods therefore forms part of the total goods earmarked for
export and finally finds its way to foreign countries where it
is dumped.
This form of slave labour is used on a wholesale scale in
the timber districts of Russia. Of the total 800 Ogpu camps
in the country some 600 are used solely for lumber work.
But Ogpu labour is also used in the manganese ore mines,
in some oil mines, in salt mines, in fur trapping and in
loading and unloading export cargoes.