10-16-2007, 08:53 PM
Kirchgoens Wrote:I just finished Robert Conquest's "The Great Terror" (his 1990 re-release). I should have known this, but I think I can now safely assume that every bit of gold (solid or plating) most likely came from the Gulag's Kolyma gold fields, pulled by a very large number of very unhappy and almost entirely innocent victims - especially those awards from the 30's to 50's. It adds a bit of seriousness to the hobby realizing that someone most likely died in the effort to produce our favorite awards. Maybe the small justice of it all is that these awards are now in our collections and no longer active representations. Simply my ponderings...
...Brian
Brian,
One should use caution when looking at the facts / numbers presented in Robert Conquest's works.
He wrote his books with limited or no access to Russian archives. There have been more recent studies by Russian historians who take his numbers into question.
Remember that he wrote his books in the middle of Cold War...
William
