'The Soviet Union was committed to rehabilitation': Fury as hard-left student group at London university mounts extraordinary defence of notorious GULAG worker camps

A student union group has been roundly condemned after mounting an extraordinary defence of Stalin's notorious gulags.

Over one million people died in the infamous worker camps in the Communist Soviet Union, while other critics of the regime were imprisoned there for years and forced to work to the edge of exhaustion. But hard-left activists at Goldsmiths university tweeted a defence of the gulags - claiming they helped rehabilitate workers and were nicer than Western prisons.

They claimed that inmates were actually treated well and allowed to join theatre groups and write for prison newspapers.

Historians voiced their astonishment at the ludicrous defence, while relatives of those killed in gulags accused the student group of trying to rewrite history. The student union suspended the organisation pending an investigation,while the university said the tweets were 'inappropriate'.

The group, tweeting under the name LGBTQ+Goldsmiths, said they wanted to 'clarify what a gulag is' and why sending people there 'is actually a compassionate, non-violent course of action'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6154777/Goldsmiths-student-group-mounts-extraordinary-defence-notorious-GULAG-worker-camps.html