Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century until his death in 1953. During that time, millions of people, dissidents and sometimes ordinary citizens with modest wealth, were sent to Soviet prisons as punishment. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago chronicled their imprisonment.

What happened to these prisoners after their release?

The Economist (December 4th, 2021; “‘Levelling up’ at gunpoint”) pinpointed a study shedding light on this question.

Released prisoners, the study indicated, tended to settle close to where they were released, generally isolated regions of the Soviet Union. The dissidents often were well-educated. The study suggested that their choice, upon gaining freedom, was a boon for the regions where they settled. After the Soviet Union broke up, economic activity tended to grow rapidly where the released prisoners settled.

This result, the article suggested, is a revenge on Stalin’s inhuman practices: “Joseph Stalin did his best to wipe out perceived enemies.” Instead, their activities have “outlived the gulag by six decades.”