Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Human Rights,
U.S. Security Damaged
By Slave-Labor Goods
- 1 -
-2-
Slave-Labor Goods continued
the reason the products are so cheap. It mined, produced or manufactured pointed out in a recent Issue Bulletin:
is because these goods are produced, wholly or in ,part in any foreign Section 307 of the 1930 Tariff Act
in whole or in part, by the exploitation "currently is being enforced against
of captive labor. Because their sys certain areas of Mexico, prohibiting
"Forced labor is by no
tems are based on brute force in the importation of some furniture
means exceptional in the
stead of voluntary exchange and the items, clothes hampers, and palm
price system, the Communist regimes Soviet Union ...." leaf bags. Treasury has evidently
of the Soviet Union and Red China concluded that these items were pro
need not take into account the costs country by convict labor and/or duced by 'workers under detention;
in human suffering involved in the forced labor." yet there is little question that 'slave
production of such goods. In a Wall According to the law, which is labor' does not exist in Mexico as it
Street Journal article titled "The quite clear, the U.S. Customs Service does in the U S SR. In general, the
System Of Forced Labor In Russia, " is required to open an investigation Act's provision has been applied to
former Moscow correspondent· David when it is contacted by any citizen imports of small, handmade objects.
Satter observed:
"Forced labor is by no
means exceptional in the
Soviet Union. It is an in
"
tegral part of the econom \
- 3 -
Slave-Labor Goods continued
tice, horror, and brutality involved. and roads to the mines. Compelled to steamer Dzhurma. The Dzhurma, a
From the very inception of Com work in temperatures which some large ocean liner especially equipped
munism in Russia, Bolshevik leader times reached fifty degress below for shipment of Dalstroy prisoners,
V.l. Lenin instigated a policy of zero without extra clothing or even sailed from Vladivostok in the sum
slavery and terror. This was refined tents in which to sleep at night, these mer of 1933 on its maiden voyage to
and extended by Comrade Stalin. slaves died quickly. During the first Ambarchik (a distance of over 4,000
miles)- carrying a capacity
cargo of about 12,000
prisoners. The time of
sailing was not carefully
calculated, the ship
reached the Arctic Ocean
too late in the season, and
was caught in packed ice
in the western part of the
Sea of Chukotsk, near
Wrangel Island. We are
not likely ever to learn
what went on in that ship
during that terrible Arctic
winter, how the doomed
prisoners in its holds strug
gled for life, and how
they died. The fully
authenticated fact is that
the Dzhurma, when it fi
nally arrived in Ambar
chik in the summer of
1934, did not land a sin
gle prisoner. It is also fur
ther reported that on their
return to Vladivostok
nearly half the crew of
the Dzhurma had to be
Huge numbers of people were sent to year of the "Dalstroy Experiment," t?:"eated for mental disorders. How
the proliferating labor camps to in which the Soviet government sent ever, what mattered for the govern
work on Soviet construction projects. thousands of prisoners into that ment was not the loss of prisoners
It must be understood that these were area, fewer than one out of fifty and the sufferings of the crew but
not hardened criminals. They were in survived. As the enormous casualties the fact that the valuable ship was
the main persons suspected of "anti mounted, they would be replaced by saved."
Soviet activity," which could mean shiploads of new slaves, who in turn The use of slave labor in Soviet
anything from not listening to one worked until they died and were re Russia was movingly documented
of Stalin's public speeches to taking placed by still more prisoners from more recently by Aleksandr Solzhenit
a handful of wheat for one's chil slave ships, and so on. syn in his monumental three-volume
dren to prevent starvation. Many had The following excerpt from Forced expose entitled The Gulag Archipel
only the vaguest notion of the "crime " ago. A long list of slave-labor proj
for which they were sentenced. ects was discussed there by Sol
" . ..what mattered for
In Forced Labor In Soviet Russia zhenitsyn. Some of the most horrific
( 1948, New Haven, Yale University the government was not of these blood-stained adventures
Press), Professor David Dallin es the loss of prisoners and included the construction of the
timates that during the Stalin years the sufferings of the crew Volga-Don canal; the second Trans
the average number of prisoners in but the fact that the Siberian railroad; the pipeline from
the gulag prison system was at least Sakhalin to the mainland; the mining
valuable ship was saved."
fifteen million, with a casualty rate of various ores, such as gold and
of fifty percent every year owing limestone; and, the erection of entire
to malnutrition, overwork, bitter Labor In Soviet Russia describes new towns. These and many other
cold, and repeated torture. what happened to one such shipment projects were constructed by the So
Thousands of people were taken of slave workers: viets with the extensive use of slave
into the holds of ships and trans "One of the early - and the most labor and at the cost of literally
ported to the Kolyma region of east tragic - of the sailings to the millions of lives. Aleksandr Sol
ern Siberia in order to build a port Kolyma estuary was that of the zhenitsyn writes:
�--
- 4 -
"Who other than the Archipelago and scoundrels who were born sadists
natives [forced laborers] would have Soviet socialism relies but who, for all that, were as de
grubbed out stumps in winter? Or voted to their benefactor as only a
on negative sanctions to
hauled on their backs the boxes of member of an outlaw gang can be
motivate its workers.
mined ore in the open gold fields of toward his chief." These people were
the Kolyma? Or have dragged out These incIude physical assigned to fill and staff the slave
timber a half-mile from the Koin abuse and torture. camps. "All the dregs of society rose.
River . . . through deep snow on to the surface. The Criminal was
Finnish timber-sledge runners, har sonal gain, Soviet socialism has recruiting criminals . . . . An inves
nessed' up in pairs in a horse collar from the beginning relied on nega tigator earned a bonus of two thou
(the collar bows upholstered with tat tive sanctions to motivate its workers. sand rubles for each confession.
ters of rotten clothing to make them These include the threat, and use, of Every petty thief, sadist, or climber
softer, and the horse collar worn over physical and psychological abuse and was free to go at it as hard as he
one shoulder)? " torture. According to a recent book by liked. "
In the absence of the positive Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko, the Com The book describes the torture in
incentive of private profit and per- munists "selected hardened thugs Continued ...
I't)n, I
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crane
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barbed wire fence
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street
-5-
Continued Latvians, or other captive peoples, Soviets faced with probable defeat
those taken away to labor in the Sovi by the armies of Hitler, "Uncle Joe "
the camps. Among the day to-day et work camps range in age from Stalin actually diverted hundreds of
equipment were implements for children to people over eighty thousands of troops from the West
breaking large bones, for squeezing years old. Indeed, forty-eight per ern Front to keep the slave camps
testicles, for piercing the soles of cent of the gulag inmates have been going and to ensure that no rebellion
feet and pulling off the nails and could break out among the subju
skin from human hands. There were gated populations. The story of
instruments used to squeeze the main Children were rounded
these camps is told and documented
nose ligament until the victim bleeds up and sent to prison by historian Robert Conquest in his
profusely. Special "electrical appli camps, where they worked books The Great Terror and Kolyma.
ances" were used to produce tremen and suffered, carrying It is brought up to date by Avraham
dous pain. Shifrin and others.
manure or being sexually
Nicolai Tolstoy writes of these After the war, thousands of Rus"
molested at knifepoint.
Soviet slave camps: "Recovered sians and East Europeans - pris
corpses resembled cuts of meat dis oners and ordinary civilians who had
played on a butcher's slab. What children. ( Solzhenitsyn, Gulag, Vol managed to escape Soviet tyranny
prisoners had undergone was inde ume II, Page 448) For stealing a scrap were forcibly returned to Russia at
scribable, even by the survivors. As a of food to survive - or for merely the command of General Eisen
'
Pole in an NKVD prison recalled, being homeless because their parents hower. This meant almost certain
'The cries we heard were not always had been arrested or executed - chil- , death, either by execution or by cruel
even recognizably human . . . . ' " dren were rounded up and sent to tortures and slave labor. Many com
Noting countless similar cases of prison camps, where they worked and mitted suicide - slitting their wrists,
sadistic torturing, Tolstoy writes suffered, carrying manure or being hanging themselves from lamp
about patriots in Latvia, Estonia, and sexually molested at knifepoint. posts, or jumping off bridges -
rather than return to Communist
slavery. American officers decided,
to try to deceive the rest by telling
them that the trains they were being
packed into would be going west. In
stead, the shameful slave trains
went east, surrounded by Soviet
- 6 -
The human cost of
slave-labor goods
Shown above are the children of Pavel Ritikov. who was sen
tenced in 1975 to five years imprisonment for his belief in God,
His mother's address: Podg'ornaya Street 30. Krasnodon.
Ukrainian S.S. R., U.S.S.R. Ritikov was arrested ag'ain in 1980.
(Source: First Guidebook To Tlle Prisons And Concentl'ation
Camps Of' Tlle Sovie t Un�oll by Avraham Shifrin)
I
,,
�
-7-
Stop Financing Communism! -�----...
It has been going on with the Soviets for decades, and look what it has The LarrY McDonald Crusade To Stop Financing Communism'�
,;.2627 Mission Street " 395 Concord Avenue
cost us de'arly in taxes and loss of security; Here are some examples: san Matino, CA 91108 Belmont, MA 02178 ,
Address __________�______�__________________________
Stop Financing Communism
City _____ State ___ Zip ________
Te lep h on e __ __________________________________________
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----- ---------------------------
Slave-Labor Goods more than four million slave labor the International Commission on
ers, including at least ten thousand Human Rights, concludes that the
Continued ...
people known to be political and re Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
ligious prisoners of conscience. Com "continues the deplorable practice
berger acknowledged that " Soviet ing as they do from the "Liberal " of forced labor in manufacturing
authorities still exploit forced labor State Department, you can be sure and construction projects " and that
on a large scale" and "forced labor, that these estimates have been min prisoners, "among them women and
often under harsh and degrading imized. Others (including former in children, are' forced to work under
conditions, is used to execute various mates of the gulag) estimate that conditions of extreme hardship in
Soviet development projects and to the number of labor camps in the cluding malnutrition, inadequate
produce large amounts of primary U. S.S.R. exceeds two thousand and shelter and clothing, and severe
and manufactured goods for both that the number of forced laborers discipline. "
domestic and Western export mar is easily in excess of five million. This hardly conveys the magnitude
kets." Even so, those numbers represent of the evil or the extent of human
According to this State Depart only the most extreme form of slave misery involved. It is difficult, if
ment report, the Soviets run a net labor, since virtually all labor in not impossible, for Americans fully
work of some eleven hundred Communist nations is forced .. to appreciate the routine horrors of
forced-labor camps, containing Another recent report, issued by the gulag. The Soviet Union con-
NOR.
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lJRTA AUL.
liNG ATA.
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.DlHAMBUL
TASHKENT • • N I KOLAEVKA
CHAMALGAN.
.NAVOI <>
DUSHANBE.
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A F G
H
We do not claim that this map of women·s and children·s camps in the Soviet Union, reproduced from First Guidebook
To The Prisons And Concentration Camps Of The Soviet Union by Avraham Shifrin, is complete. On the contrary,
we are convinced that the number of such camps is significantly higher.
- 10 -
tinues its ruthless exploitation of believers. The charge: 'anti-Soviet paid Belov and his fellow convicts 60
slave laborers, and the conditions in agitation and propaganda.' He was rubles a month - 'free' workers got
which they work are as bad as ever sent to camp ZhKh 385/1 1 in Mor about 100 rubles - but withheld 75
they were under Stalin. dovia, 200 miles southeast of Mos percent to pay for the minimal camp
In 1982 the Frankfurt-based In cow. Here, 2000 convicts each assem food, clothing, and maintenance."
ternational Society for Human bled 140 wooden chairs per shift, While interviewing former in
Rights and the Copenhagen-based In mates of the gulag, Harriss was struck
ternational Sakharov Committee A dissident was arrested by the omnipresence of slave-labor
jointly sponsored an international products exported to the West: "One
for boldly scrawling
tr·ibunal in Bonn, West Germany, to woman pointed at the wooden fold
on a wall, "You strangle
raise the consciousness of the world ing chair that I was sitting on. 'That's
about slave labor behind the Iron our freedom, but you can't a souvenir from the Gulag,' she said.
Curtain. Former inmates of slave chain people's souls." On the bottom was marked 'Made in
camps testified about the misery, U. S.S.R., ' followed by the code
degradation, and torture they had which were sent to a 'free' factory 33340, indicating the camp where it
themselves endured in recent years.It in Minsk. There, finishing touches was produced. The United States last
was firmly established that four to were put on before the chairs were year imported hundreds of such
five million people now suffer in exported to the West. Thus the chairs, part of our multimillion-dol
those camps.And that people are still Kremlin could claim the goods were lar trade in which we buy the prod
, being haule<;l. off on such charges as made by 'free' workers. ucts of Soviet convict labor, in con
"anti- Soviet activity" and "hooligan "Belov remembers with a sardonic travention of U.S. law."
ism" - allegations which cover a smile the political commissar who Alexander Ginzburg, now living in
broad range of activities, including told ZhKh 385/ 1 1 inmates to be proud Paris, tells of his role in making
many which are constitutional rights because their work earned the moth goods for export while a slave in the
in the United States. erland hard currency and cost almost Gulag. "We cut and polished glass
In his widely read article which nothing. Indeed! The motherland Continued ...
appeared in the September 1983 issue
of Reader's Digest, Joseph Harriss This Intourist ho
cited some examples of slave condi tel in B u k hara,
tions as revealed by those who testi shown at right un
-11-
into the kitchen - but most fre called Misha that were the mascot
Continued
quently there is none - and then for the Summer Olympic Games
they boil stagnant water , which is held in Moscow in 1980 as well as for
for chandeliers ," Ginzburg said . very dirty. It stinks, but you have to this year's Winter Games in Commu
"The room was full of abrasive drink it." nist Yugoslavia. They were made, by
dust. Men spat blood and got silico In The First Guidebook To Prisons women in a slave camp, about which
sis ." The U .S . Department of Com And Concentration Camps In The Davydov"reports:
merce admits" that we import glass Soviet Union ( 1982, New York, Ban "Using Regular Women's Camp
articles from the Soviet Union , but tam Books) , Avraham Shifrin, an UTs-267/10 as an example (in Gor
is unwilling to confirm whether this exiled Jew who spent fourteen years noye in Maritime Kray ) , I will brief
includes chandeliers . The Central In in the" Soviet prison system for ly explain the daily living conditions
telligence Agency, however , reports "anti-Soviet activities ," documents of the inmates . There are 2 , 000
that we do import chandeliers from many of the two thousand known women in a camp designed for 500.
the slave camps . work camps, prisons, and extermina Water is brought in from outside
Yuri Orlov , a Russian physicist , tion centers where slave labor is used and is therefore in short supply .
and other Soviet dissidents, such as by the Soviet Union . Augmented with Baths are rare. The rules of fem
Anatoly Scharansky , are still suf scrupulously authenticated maps and inine hygiene cannot be observed.
fering in Soviet slave-labor camps rare photographs - many obtained The laundry has only 20 tubs - and
today. Orlov works as a lathe operator at great risk and then smuggled to the this is for 2,000 women! There are
at a camp in the Perm region near the
Ural Mountains . Despite failing eye
sight, Scharansky has been made
arduously to handweave eight potato
sacks per day in his dimly lit cell at
Chistopol Prison, located 540 miles
east of Moscow .
Occasionally, letters are smuggled
"
out of the Soviet Union which pro-
vide first-hand accounts of the
shocking conditions under which po
litical prisoners suffer in the Soviet
labor camps. One such letter - a plea
to the West - was written in April
of 1982 by a prisoner of conscience
residing in Camp VS 389-36- 1 near
Perm, on the western fringe of Si
beria . The letter, which depicts a
nightmare of abuse and malnutri
tion for those who dare oppose Sovi
et socialism, observes that "between
two and five prisoners share a cell"
and that "each is allotted two square
meters of space in the cell . We do
not meet prisoners from other cells,
we work in separate cells and only West - Mr . Shifrin's book illus only two paramedics (and no physi
with those with whom we live." trates the brutality of the Soviet cian) in the medical unit . Women are
Prisoners must live in unventil labor camps, giving their locations, excused from work only if they
lated cells in which the stench is sizes, and conditions . have a high temperature and only
horrible . One of the daily tasks of All told, approximately sixty mil for one day at a time . The line for
the inmates of the camp is the fit lion people have perished during the medical attention begins to form at
ting of cables to electric irons . The last sixty years in those camps . The five in the morning . The elderly and
daily quota was seven hundred, but pains of overwork, torture, hunger, severely ill are quite simply physical
most prisoners could manage only and cold drive many gulag prisoners ly incapable of standing in this
four hundred a day. As a result , to desperate acts , including self kind of line . Those who are admitted
many were punished . mutilation and suicide . One fre to the medical unit must take a full
The workers must survive by con quent method for ending the misery day's dosage of medicine in the pres
suming terrible and often maggot is to 'run for the barbed wire in full ence of medical personnel, because
infested food . The letter states that view of the guards who shoot to kill . medicine is issued only once a day
camp food consists of "groats , meat Consider the testimony before and the possession of medicine by
(a piece of gristle, bone) , which is Congress last year by former gulag inmates is prohibited. Fungus in
often rotten . We hardly ever get resident Georgy Davydov . Think fections , dysentery, and jaundice are
vegetables, and when we do they are about it next time you see someone in rife in the camp. Pregnant women
never fresh . The water is very bad. a gift shop buying one of these are not issued the supplementary ra
Sometimes they bring drinking water ubiquitous little bears, the ones tion ordered by the Ministry of In-
.
- 12 .-
.
ternal Mfairs and are nat sent to. thorities decided to change their at forced labor is used in all af them. "
the mather's and father's hame titude to the corruption that had ex Railroads, dams, pipelines, canals,
(same wamen's camps have such in isted all along." and highways are canstructed by
stitutians af their awn). Incidental Satter gives same examples. The forced labor. So was the Kama River
ly, many pregnant women are afraid widespread and heavy consumptian truck factory, the largest such fa
to go to the home because it is known af vodka serves as an excuse for cility in the world, built with Ameri
for its high mortality rate. It is not Soviet leaders to draft people off can plans, technology, equipment,
surprising that the harsh canditions the streets for vast domestic-service and credit.
of camp life stimulate the devel- projects. ". . . Mass drunkenness is It is not surprising, therefore,
common, and when fights break out, that forced labor was used in con
they can lead not only to. the arrest struction of the controversial gas
Trinkets and souvenirs
and sentencing af the persons in pipeline from Siberia to. Western
are made in the volved but also to labor-camp sen Europe. Especially in the clearing af
119 prison camps for tences for everyone who. happened to swamps, cutting of timber, ' and
. /
women and children. bem the VICIni
···ty . . . . building 'of access roads. John
Caviar is also processed "The population of forced la Chamberlain comments: "The West
borers is thus constitdted not just of should be ashamed to buy gas whase
by female prisoners.
hardened criminals bMt, in the ma cast comes cheap because slaves have
jority, of people who are vulnerable been responsible for its transparta
opment af the baser instincts and to arrest because they have made tion. But, by the same token, the
that the law of the jungle prevails in typical adjustments to the nature af West should also feel, ashamed to
the camps." Soviet life. This vast pool of right take Soviet gold in payment far our
Trinkets and souvenirs - such as less manpower is then used to solve grain. If anyone suppases that the
the Misha bear - are made in the many of the Soviet ecanomy's en Siberian gold fields are operated an
119 prison camps for women and demic prablems." a free Klondike gold-rush basis, he is .
children. In a concentratian camp on By this time, it should be clear, simply crazy."
Shikotan Island, women slaves pro there are degrees of forced labor. In Indeed, mining and timber are twa
cess much of the caviar that is saId no Communist country are people Soviet industries which export a good
to the Free World. permitted freedom of choice. Those deal of products to the U.S. and
In addition to those prisoners con living under the boot of Cammu which involve extensive use af
fined to. labar camps, there is a grow nism, whether in the Soviet Empire forced labor. Cromid Lubarsky ob
ing number of human beings who or in Red China or Castro's Cuba, are serves: "An impartant sector af the
have been sentenced to internal exile. directed at every turn. They cannot
Thase caught in "minor " crimes work change their jobs at will, and have
nothing at all to say about their "...there is not a single,
off their sentences by performing
heavy ar specialized work in deadly wages. Since there is no legally recog significant area of the
labor-short industries, especially in nized private property, everyone is to Soviet economy in which
the chemical factories. one degree or another a slave to the prison labor is not
In a sacialist society of endless Socialist State. Syndicated columnist exploited ...." Don't
shortages, and with a multitude of John Chamberlain put the matter as
support this slave system.
laws covering every aspect of human well as anyone:
existence, stealing proliferates. The "All labor in the Soviet Unian is
Lord only knows how the people of compelled labar af a sort. After all, labor-camp economy which plays a
the many captive nations under So the only employer, outside of a black role in exports is the praduction of
viet domination would survive if market that is defined as criminal, is raw materials. Forced labor is af
they did not get away with some the state - and if you don't take particular significance in mining
cheating on the official socialist whatever job is presented, you don't operations, especially under danger
system. This cheating assures the eat. Communist Party members may ous conditions, and even mare so in
authorities a constant supply of la get some free play at the edges, but lumbering . . . . "
borers whom they can pick up as the they, too., are caught up in the univer-. America imports annually abaut
.
need occurs. sal servitude." $10 million worth of uranium from
David Satter observes in the Wall Saviet astronomer Cromid Lubar the U.S.S.R. Uranium ore is mined
Street Journal: "Theft is common at sky, now living in the West, has tes by forced labar at Zheltyye Vody in
every level of Soviet saciety, includ tified that: "The special thing about the Ukraine, another Ukrainian camp
ing the very highest, and elaborate the Soviet practice . . . is that the at Novaya Barovaya, several Siberian
systems af falsification and theft labor of prisaners is less a punitive camps at Krasnoyarsk, and ane in
exist in most industries. measure than an important part af Central Asia at Uchkuduk. There is no.
"This makes it relatively simple to the national ecanamy. Essentially, pratective clathing, so most labarers
find candidates for the labor there is not a single, significant area die of radioactive contaminatian
camps. Large-scale arrests for steal af the Soviet econamy in which pris within a matter of months. These
ing and black-market operations take on labor is not exploited: metals are genuine death camps.
place nat because, in most cases, processing, the' chemical industry, Farced labor is also used in the
crimes were unexpectedly uncovered the manufacture of clothing and mining of gold in Badaiba, Ar
but because at one moment the au- of machinery, agriculture, mining - Continued ...
-13-
temovsk, Taishet , Zeravshan, er Soviet ship departed from Long Based on a variety of intelligence
Muruntau, Magadan, and along the Beach, California, after longshore sources and open publications with
Yenisei River . The United States men stoutly refused to unload its information from former prisoners,
bought over $4 million worth of gold plywood following the downing by CIA has compiled the following list
from the U.S .S . R . in 1982. Gold the Soviets of K . A .L. Flight Seven, of industries and products in which
produced by slave labor . a civilian airliner with 269 passengers forced labor is used extensively.
In addition to wooden folding aboard . This was only a minor prob I. Wood Products : plywood;
chairs, America imports a great deal lem for the Reds, however . They lumber; furniture; casings for
of other wood products from the took the ship to Ensenada, Mexico, clocks; cabinets for radio and TV
Soviet slave economy, including and unloaded the plywood there, sets ; wooden chess pieces; wooden
lumber, plywood, cabinets , boxes, trucking it back into California. souvenirs; wooden crates for fruit
and vegetables; cardboard containers.
Importing low-priced goods made by slave labor II. Electronic: cathode ray tube
components; resistors.
hurts American workers employed in pr ducing
III. Glass : camera lenses; glass
similar goods.In 1982, for example, the United States ware; chandeliers .
imported some 18 million board feet of hardwood IV. Automotive: auto parts;
from the Soviet Union. That same year our domestic wheel rims; parts for agricultural
lumber production dropped to its lowest annual machinery.
output since 1945. Our 1930 federal ban against V. Mining/Ore Processing: gold;
iron; aluminum; coal and peat;
slave-labor imports needs to be enforced.
uranium ; asbestos; limestone; con
struction stone and gravel.
and carved 'figurines and souvenirs . This importation of slave-cut ply VI. Clothing: coats; gloves; boots;
The wood sector is so important that wood has had no small impact on our buttons; zippers.
the Soviet Interior Ministry, in addi own domestic wood industry in recent VII. Petroleum Products and
tion to its main Bureau of Camps years . Don Deardorff, president of Chemicals: ammonia; gasoline and
and Prisons, has a special bureau FourPly Incorporated , a plywood other motor fuel; potassium chlo- .
cracy to supervise those camps exclu manufacturer , has fought these ride; urea.
sively concerned with cutting o f Communist imports . He points out VIII. Food: caviar and tea.
trees and the primary processing of that "we in the U .S. and the Cana IX. Miscellaneous : brick and
the wood . dians can't compete with the Rus tile; watch parts ; wire fences; mat
A recent Heritage Foundation re sians because they sell at any price , tresses; screens; steel drums and
port summarized the Communist b ecause they have the slave -labor barrels; lids for glass jars; plumb
wood industry as follows : "Logging quotient we don't have . Importing ing equipment; storage battery
and wood processing is · carried on in Russian plywood does take away cases; concrete products ; electric
some 350 camps in the Urals , the from local domestic hardwood pro plugs/cords; electric heaters; elec
Northwest, the Volga-Vyatka, and ducers and from Canadian producers. tric motors; pumps; woven bags.
Siberia . Women fell trees around We were producing hardwood , but
Kirov and Lake Baikal ; children the market just dried up." In 1982 about eighty percent of all
make shipping cases at Novaya Lyal In 1982, our domestic lumber pro U .S . imports from the U .S.S.R. were
ya in the Sverdlovsk region . The U .S . duction dropped to its lowest annual accounted for by metals, chemicals,
imports about $3.5 million worth of output since 1945, delivering only and chemical products (mainly am
wood products from the U .S .S . R . 13 .7 billion board feet , according to monia ) , fertilizers , furs , fur raw
According to congressional sources, figures compiled by the Western materials, and alcoholic beverages .
the U.S. Customs Service is drawing Wood Products Association . Ameri The biggest single item, according to
up a list of such Soviet products but can and Canadian industries have the C.I.A. report of September 27,
it will include less than half of cur been competing with each other for 1983, was ammonia - thirty-nine
rent imports . A senior Treasury of years; but, as Deardorff notes , "the percent - imported as part of the
ficial indicates, however , that the Canadians don't use slave labor." Occidental-U.S .S . R . Fertilizer Ex
list is not in its final form ." Explains Deardorff: "I believe in change Agreement under which the
In 1982, the United States im free trade among free people . But United States exports super-phos
ported about eighteen million board you are dealing with slave labor with phoric acid to the Soviet Union for
feet of hardwood from the Soviet the Russians . The fact of the mat use in its heavy industries . This deal
Union . Not many Americans knew ter is that we have subsidized the was financed and facilitated
about it, however, until relatively re Communist Russian system for through the notorious Export-Import
cently. When patriotic longshoremen years and we continue to do that. Bank for Red trader Armand Ham
refused to unload a Russian freighter This is just another glaring example." mer , head of Occidental Petroleum
which docked in Brooklyn last fall, The following is a list , prepared and a longtime user of slave-labor
the Red ship merely steamed to by the C.I.A . , of some of the goods imports .
Halifax, Nova Scotia, where its car which the United States imports The above-listed categories of
go of plywood was unloaded and from the Soviet Union and which products are only those our govern
trucked to Boston and New York . involve the extensive use o f forced ment admits involve the "extensive
On September fourteenth, an �th- labor : use" of the harshest slave labor . It
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should be kept in mind that anything
from the Soviet Union , because of
the nature of its coercive system, has
some component of fo rced labor
involved in its production and/or
transportation . In one degree or an
other, the hand of a Soviet prisoner
or forced laborer of one kind or
another has touched everything that
the West receives from the Soviet
bloc .
This is also true of Communist
occupied China. A country whose
citizens are paid pathetic wages , told
where to work , and what occupation
to be engaged in is a slave-labor coun
try. While less is known about slave
labor camps in Red China, they do
exist in great numbers there . And
America is importing more and more
from Red China - especially in the
area of textiles .
According to a spokesman for the
Office of Textiles of the U . S .
Department of Commerce , total
U .S . imports for 1983 in the area of
textiles came to 7.4 billion square
yards . Of this , 10.6 percent - some
784 .3 million square yards - came
from Red China . Shirts made under
Communism in mainland China are
to be found in many department
The 3 . 600-mile Soviet pipeline is being- built with Western technolog'y and credit.
stores in the U.S . including such
and expert testimony reveals that it will cost the lives of perhaps a million slave
chains as May Company, Robinson's, laborers forced to work on it. The pipeline will bring' the Kremlin as much as $8
and The Broadway . The Broadway is billion annually in hard currency. enabling- its war machine to run at full tilt.
a subsidiary of Carter Hawley Hale
Stores , Incorpo rated , * a national
firm which owns several chains of cotton printcloth, a low� priced, un Communist textiles add up to ap
stores around our country . Interest finished cloth ready for dyeing . The proximately 850 million square
ingly , the chairman of the board is medium-weight fabric is used in yards . No wonder our own textile
Philip M . Hawley, a member of the . both furnishings and apparel. Ac enterprises are being driven to the
Trilateral Commission, an organiza- I
cording to the International Trade wall !
tion established more than ten years I Commission, Red China's share of In many American hardware
ago by David Rockefeller and Zbig the U .S . polyester-cotton printcloth stores you can buy Double Grip nails
niew Brzezinski to create a New market jumped from 0.05 percent in which come in distinctive blue-and
World Order of trade . 1979 to nearly fourteen percent in yellow boxes . The nails , which are of
In 1983 a new five-year trade 1982, when it supplied 61.5 percent inferior quality , are made by Com
agreement was signed between the of all such imports . American com . munist slaves and imported from
U .S . and Red China which allows the panies (mainly located in the the People's Republic of China .
Red Chinese a greater share of th� Carolinas) saw their profits drop Souvenirs and gimcrackery from
American market than that per from $16.6 million in 1981 to only Communist countries can be found
mitted the other major textile export $223,000 in 1982. They lost money in many U .S . gift and "thrift "
ers - the free countries of Hong last year - over $4.3 million in the shops , such a s Pic 'n' Save stores .
Kong , the Re public of China on first three months of 1983 alone . They carry many imports from Red
Taiwan , and South Korea . Red China Other Communist nations from China, including a variety of con
sells some thirty -three categories of which America imports textiles in sumer goods ranging from wicker
textile products in American markets clude Romania , 36.3 million square baskets to stuffed animals and
and is known for dumping polyester- yards ; Poland, 8.3 million square trinkp.ts .
yards ; Hungary, 5.5 million square Many TV viewers are familiar
·Carter Hawley Hale Stores, Inc., of Los An yards ; Czecho -Slovakia , 4.1 million with the song in the advertisements
geles, owns not only the Broadway chain, but square yards ; and, Yugoslavia, 3.6 sponsored by the International Ladies
also Bergdorf Goodman; Walden Books;
Neiman-Marcus; Sunset House; Weinstock's;
million square yards . When added to Garment Workers Union which says,
Emporium Capwell; Holt Renfrew; and, House the quantity of textiles imported "Look for the union label." We need
of Fraser. from Red China, these slave-made Continued IF
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So it is not too surprlsmg that should not be able to make 'blood
William Casey would protect the money' from buying products pro
·LOOK FOR THE identities of U . S . firms profiting at duced by slave or forced labor, or
the expense of the human misery of from selling goods or services to be
COMMIE LABEL! slave labor. On the other hand, he says used at slave-labor facilities. How
that his earlier actions were directed sickeningly ironical it would be if
by higher authority. Where does Ron- . American computers would keep
to remind people when they are shop aid Reagan stand on this issue? track of political prisoners, or that
ping to "Look for the Commie label" Many organizations are not wait American pipelaying equipment
- and refrain from purchasing ing for the federal government to would be manned by Vietnamese
goods made by slave labor . When the enforce our law . Carl Olson, chair forced -labor gangs working on the
label on a shirt or a basket or a down man of Stockholders for World Siberian gas pipeline . "
filled coat reads "Made in China, " it Freedom, Box 7273, Alexandria , Vir The A.F.L.-C.I . O . is also asking
is referring to Mainland ( Commu ginia 22307, is putting pressure on that our government do its duty by
nist) China. When the label reads corporations by involving their stock enforcing the legal ban against slave
"Made in Taiwan" or "Made in the ho lders in a program to "take the imports. Tom Kahn , an A . l'- .L.
Republic of China" it is referring to profit out of slave and forced la C.I . O . spokesman, testified in Con
non-Communist China on the island bor . " At the annual meetings of ma- gress last fall on the need to stop
of Taiwan where the people are undercutting American workers with
free and among the best paid in slave-labor products which are being
Asia . Furniture From dumped on our economy . Anyone
Americans must act individually working in the textile or clothing in
CC'mmunist Yugoslavia dustries should be especially con
and together to do something about
all of this . Despite the growing level cerned about the considerable
of slave-labor imports from the So amount of Red textiles and fin
viet bloc and Red China , our govern ished garments of every kind pour
ment continues to refuse to enforce ing into the United States . Workers
the law which has prohibited the im in our timber and wood-working in
portation of such products since dustries shouid also be mobilized
. 1930. Both Congress and private or against the atrocity of slave labor.
ganizations must launch serious in At the grass-roots level, patriotic
vestigations of who in the United Americans are organizing committees
States is merchandising Soviet im of the national Larry McDonald
ports, and the names of such com Crusade To Stop Financing Com
panies must be widely publicized . munism (Belmont, Massachusetts
The C.I.A., although it has released 02178) to oppose and expose the sale
the list of broad categories of goods of slave-labor products in the p faces
referred to earlier in this article, has of business in their own commu
refused to release the detailed in nities . And the McDonald Crusade is
formation it has on which American working hard to put pressure on Trea
companies are doing business with sury Secretary Donald Regan to allow
the Communists and importing slave Customs Commissioner William von
labor products into the United Raab to execute his duty under the
States . The Director of the C .I.A. is Tariff Act of 1930. We heartily
William J. Casey ( C .F . R . ) , the man recommend that you contact the
who, as director of the Export-Im McDonald Crusade to see what you
port Bank during the Nixon Adminis can do .
tration, pushed through the financ- ' Meanwhile, "Look for the Com
ing of the Kama River factory in mie label. " And , when you see one,
which American companies were inform the manager of the store in
heavily involved in providing U.S. which you see it that this represents
technology and expertise for con collaboration with slavery and may
struction of the world's largest and very well be against the law. Also,
most modern truck plant. Vehicles jor corporations Olson informs the write your Senators and Congressman
manufactured there were used by stockholders about slave-labor im today to urge that the C.I .A. and the
the Red Army in its brutal invasion ports and the fact that they are Departments of the Treasury and
of Afghanistan . Casey, a friend against the law . The stockholders are Commerce release the detailed in
of Armand Hammer and Ronald asked to vote on a resolution to boy formation they have on the firms
Reagan's 1980 campaign manager , cott all such trading and to aid ref importing and selling Communist
was also responsible for the $20 bil ugees of Communist regimes . Olson goods. This will help alert more and
lion Occidental-U . S . S . R . Fertilizer maintains : more Americans to the incredible role
Exchange - the biggest single trade "We must not let our American the West continues to play in sub
deal between the U . S. and the Soviet corporations support slave or forced sidizing the most cruel tyranny in
.
Union ever made . labor in Communist countries. They history . • •
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