Mortality rate in prisons in general was adequate to mortality rate in the country. Under "who cares" I mean, that nobody will search for sources, they prefer write about 40 millions killed personally by Stalin. They don't care that it's lie they don't care that it was impossible to prison 20% of population.
Same with elections by the way. Everybody tells that 64% votes for Putin it's fake. No one cares about process of elections, web-cameras, opposition and observes. No one even cares about how many votes he should have if elections was "clear".

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Hitler's reaction on Ultimate patch
Soul of Wargame
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Well, many international observers actually reported massive frauds.
Here are some reports:

- Hilary Clinton, US Foreign Secretary: "At the same time (. . .) we expressed concerns that we thought were well-founded about the conduct of the elections", "Russian voters deserve a full investigation of all credible reports of electoral fraud and manipulation, and we hope in particular that the Russian authorities will take action".

- Alain Juppé, France's Foreign Affairs Minister: "Elections were not exemplary, that's the less we can say", "[the electoral campaign] was clearly biased [in favor of Prime Minister Putin]"

- European Consil & OSCE's observers reported that Putin was given a clear advantage in access to the media. It says voters had a limited choice of candidates because of overly restrictive registration requirements. The OSCE also reports voting irregularities at one-third of the polling stations.
Here is a list of the OSCE's reported violations:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/observers-list-violations-putins-vote-15848925#.T2HTUBEf58E

As for the some Russian opponents:

- Communist Party candidate Zyuganov denounced the election as "illegitimate, unfair and not transparent". But of course you may accuse this one of being too involved, I grant you that ...

- Former USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev told the Interfax news agency that he doubts the results reflect the true will of Russians. He said the challenge now is to change the country's election system to make voting fair, and restore direct election for governors.

- Election Monitor Group GOLOS said the elections were "neither free nor fair".

So, yes, people do actually care about the process, that's why they even expressed doubt about it ...

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Criticism from United States does not count. Make direct presidential election first, then criticize our.

agreed.

Big part of violations "according to GOLOS"
Golos is not independent monitor group, it's financed from US. From USAID if you want me to be correct.

And Communists and even Golos still agreed, that Putin won. Not with 64% but he had more than 50% of votes. They argue about what advantage he had. But for West it's look like Russian people don't choose Putin at all. And they start talking about color revolution.

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Hitler's reaction on Ultimate patch
Soul of Wargame
My fantrailer

i drew a picture of you

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Hitler's reaction on Ultimate patch
Soul of Wargame
My fantrailer

Some people here really need to learn their history...

The brutality and gulags associated with the USSR are primarily trappings of the Stalinist Regime, if you haven't heard of the secret speech at least then you really should keep your criticism of the soviet regime to a minimum and listen to those that know a thing or two. Reinforcing this point, you want to know what happened after '56 in the gulags? Probably not much for the remaining 4 years before they were formally dissolved, look at the trend in deaths towards the end, the transfer of power to Khrushchev would have only accelerated this trend and eventually ended the gulags entirely. Painting the entire soviet era with a Stalinist brush is incredibly ignorant and unappreciative of the leaders that followed him that allowed for a relatively peaceful prosperous world.

Coming to modern day Putin I suggest that some of you look up the documentary 'Russia, Putin and the West' it's made by the BBC which hates commies and Russians as much as the most red-blooded American but they at least try to be honest and roughly seem to get it right. Putin isn't simply a dictator imposing his will on an unwilling country for his own profit and good to think so is ignorant at best and propaganda at worst. Putin isn't good for democracy and may, at this point, no longer be good for Russia but without a doubt he was good for Russia during his earlier years when the state's ability to run the country free from business influence and/or outside influence was very much on the brink. Like many influential leaders Putin's far more complicated then 'savior of Russia' or 'dictator of Russia' I think you'll find the truth somewhere between.

That's true that Khrushchev was a lot less repressive than Stalin and Brejniev. He closed the goulags and rehabilitated a lot of Stalin's victims (but not all of them, Trotsky, by exemple, wasn't). Of course, his rule wasn't democratic, far from it. The regime still closely monitored the opponents of the regime and the increase of liberty of expression was very modest. About Putin, I saw the first documentary of the series that you spoke of. I think it's a well made one : very objective and informative. We see how Putin tried to clean up the state from unwaranted influence, but also how he monitors the opposition and the medias. We see is good and bad sides. History is never black and white. It's gray, sometimes the tint is very near of being black, sometimes it's more white, but there is always a little of the two (I have a formation in history myself).

Yeah I don't think Khrushchev was trying to make the USSR democratic but I still put a lot of value in the de-Stalinization that occurred under him, as much as it might not help freedom of speech much to go from being put in the Gulag if you speak out to simply having your voice suppressed it certainly helps the people having to deal with it directly.

As to Putin, I think he's the sort of person you want in charge when the excesses of capitalism are the biggest threat to the country, which they were in the 90s, now I think he's a man without a cause other then power and could really do some listening to Medvedev in trying to work how to improve and grow the country going forward. He did a lot of good in restoring the important role the state should play in running the country now that state needs more guidance to make use of that power.