Soviet Paper Prints Blast at Labor Camps

A paper has published a letter from a former prisoner criticizing Soviet labor camps and asking that more information about them be released.

Western diplomats said it may be the first letter published in official mass media criticizing the camps, about which almost no official information is available.

The letter was signed by former convict V. Stavrovsky of Smolensk and said the camps, estimated to hold at least 1 million prisoners, turn people into hardened criminals.

“It is high time to say what is going on in the corrective labor camps,” the weekly Literary Gazette, which published the letter in its current edition, said in an accompanying commentary.

Part of a Review

Publication of the letter appears to be part of a review of the criminal justice system. Soviet media have published examples of miscarriages of justice over the last year, and some high-ranking officials have called for better protection of citizens against false arrest and imprisonment.

“It’s possible something like this appeared before in legal publications, but that something with a critical tone of the camps should show up in the Literary Gazette is astonishing,” a Western diplomat said privately.

Literary Gazette is one of the country’s largest newspapers, with a circulation of about 3.5 million.

Its commentary said some readers probably would be upset by publication of a convict’s letter, but “the rules of glasnost (openness) tolerate no exceptions.”

Stavrovsky’s letter said little about camp conditions, which have been described in detail by former political prisoners freed in a recent review of dissident cases, but he wrote of the inability of a common criminal to reform himself in the camps.