Gulag

[Alina Israeli]

БТС: ГУЛАГ — Государственное управление исправительно–трудовых  
лагерей, поселений и мест заключения. Существовало в 1934 — 1956 гг.  
при НКВД. | О социалистических странах Восточной Европы.  
Социалистический г. Восточноевропейский г.

In other words, it's an organization whose name metaphorically was  
applied to the system of camps: Bol'shoj Enciklopedicheskij  
slovar' (BES): термин "Г." стал синонимом лагерей и тюрем НКВД,  
тоталитарного режима в целом.

So what we see is a metaphorical extension of a meaning of a word to  
plug a hole where there is no word comparable to

[БЭС] Холокост — гибель значит. части евр. населения Европы (св. 6  
млн., св. 60%) в ходе систематич. преследования и уничтожения его  
нацистами и их пособниками в Германии и на захваченных ею терр. в 1933 
—45. Др. назв. — Катрстрофа.

One can deny the existence of Holocaust or Gulag, of course, but it  
would not be very different from denying the existence of the  
Atlantic ocean.


On Feb 3, 2008, at 1:48 PM, Andrey Shcherbenok wrote:

> I would like to observe that preferring this or that history  
> textbook or
> being on the left or on the right (the word GULAG, by the way, is  
> not a
> neutral word to describe Soviet penitentiary system, it predicates a
> particular radical interpretation of Soviet history, namely, that of
> Solzhenitsyn) is very different from knowing where Atlantic ocean  
> is located
> or who was fighting whom in the World War II.



Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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