User talk:128.36.7.230

I just noticed that my changes have been undone. I see one good case for rejecting the changes: that this page is about the abolition of slavery, not about its temporary resurgence. If that is the editorial guideline, the following entries also need to be removed:

1802 Napoleon re-introduces slavery in sugarcane-growing colonies.[79] 1835 A decree of Felipe Santiago Salaverry re-legalizes the importation of slaves from other Latin American countries. The line "no slave shall enter Peru without becoming free" is taken out of the Constitution in 1839.[101] 1935 Nazi Germany legalized forced labor.[155]

I suppose the 1935 entry could also be rewritten as "1945: The Allies liberate millions of forced laborers in Nazi Germany. Millions of German and Hungarian civilians and POWs from all Axis powers become forced laborers in the Soviet Union, Poland, France, Britain, and in smaller numbers in the Low Countries and Scandinavia." (The second sentence is in line with the context given elsewhere, e.g. the 1732 entry for Georgia.)

If setbacks to the abolition of slavery are included, then the omission of the Soviet and other Communist systems of effective slave labor, in countries where it had previously been abolished, is indefensible. The Laogai ("reeducation through labor") system of the People's Republic of China should also be mentioned here, as in terms of person-years, it is among the largest slave systems in world history. The fact that in victory, the Western Allies in WWII made heavy use of forced labor also strikes me as relevant, not least because this was a violation of their own laws as well as international treaties. It may also help readers understand two important things: (1) Slave labor has been very pervasive long after the famous abolitions of the 19th century; in the 20th century, most of its victims were Europeans and East Asians. (2) The near-breakdown of civilization in the middle of the 20th century was far worse than we realize if we only consider the monumental crimes of the Axis powers. The Soviet Union created a model for many of the Axis crimes as well as for other Communist regimes. Even the Western Allies descended to a level of barbarity that would have been repulsive to their people in 1900 or 1930: burning millions of civilians in air raids in France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and (1950-53) Korea; starving out Japan through submarine warfare and preparing to make Germany uninhabitable for livestock by seeding anthrax throughout the country (Operation Vegetarian); standing idly by as millions of Bengalis starved to death amid well-stocked grain silos; and making extensive use of forced labor in the aftermath of WWII. The recovery of civilization in the following decades is all the more impressive in this light.

If a restoration of my additions is permitted, I would, on second thoughts, shorten the entries, in keeping with the succinct tabular format:

1929, Soviet Union: Between 1929 and 1953, the Soviet Union imprisons 14 to 18 million people in its forced labor camps.

1945: The end of WWII ends slave labor for millions and forces it upon millions of others. The Soviet Union abducts up to a million German and Hungarian civilians as forced laborers, and compels the forced labor of POWs from Germany (2.7 million), Austria, Hungary, Romania, Italy, and Japan (1.3 to 1.6 million combined). The United States transfers 740,000 German POWs to France for forced labor there. In Poland, 200,000 ethnic Germans perish in forced labor camps. In Britain, German forced labor makes up a quarter of the agricultural workforce in 1947.