The huge and still growing literature of personal recollections of the (mostly Soviet) Communist concentration camps has not been paralleled by scholarly explorations of the same topic and its social-scientific and moral dimensions. Likewise what Dariusz Tolczyk calls the “intellectual and spiritual aspect of the Soviet camp experience” remains largely unexamined and undigested by Western intellectuals, academic and other. This lack of interest is especially striking when compared to the attention (well deserved) Nazi camps have received from Western scholars. Many possible reasons for the discrepancy may be suggested, but probably the most important is the reluctance to even come close to the moral equation of Nazism and Communism that a systematic study of the Communist camps may lead to. To be sure, these camps–including the best known ones in the former Soviet Union—were not, by design, extermination camps. Mortality rates were high, but they were not achieved by gas chambers and no “Final Solution” was envisaged by the killing of a designated group of people. This is not to suggest that the Communist camps did not serve ambitious political-ideological objectives; as Tolczyk points out, they were “laboratories established by the ultimate artist, where the material was to be transformed according to the overall artistic plan.” They were considered “social medicine”: “schools of labor” administered to usher in a new era and improve human beings

The Soviet (and other Communist) camps were far more ecumenical than the Nazi ones as far as the selection of inmates was concerned: