Even today, the Russian people struggle with the legacy of their past. As Vladimir Putin strengthens the authoritarian nature of past Russian governments, it is time for Russians to truly examine the past. A nation that refuses to deal with its past may be forced to live through its misery again. Exposure of the Nazis crimes killed Nazism as ideology. The Nuremberg trial was not designed to just try Nazis leader but to expose their cruelty. There was no doubt about the outcome of these tribunals and no doubt that these Nazis leaders were guilty, but their crime was examined for all to see and for history.

Iraq will soon have to confront its own past as well when the Iraqi government puts Saddam Hussein and his henchmen on trial. This could have cleansing effect as the Iraqi people and the world will see for themselves the barbarous behavior of the Baath Party. For Democracy to take hold, the Iraqis must refute their most recent past before moving into the future. When faced with what Nazism truly meant, the Germans were force to renounce this evil past and this made it easier to transition to a democratic future. Soon the Iraqis will do the same.

What the Russian truly need to do is to examine this history and renounce it. To do so could strengthen their nascent democracy. About present Russia, Professor Merritt notes, "Significantly, there have been no trials, no truth and reconciliation commissions. Many of the mass graves have been unearthed, but these attract little notice in Russia and scarcely more than a paragraph in Western newspapers. Irreconcilable versions of the past contend for the current Russian soul. An astonishing number of Russians — perhaps as many as 15 or 20 percent — reject Memorial's documentation of the terror and view Stalin as a positive historical figure. Applebaum cites Russians saying that the gulag was somehow a historical necessity; that without it Russia could never have tapped the vast resources of the Far East." For us here in America, Gulag represent needed review of the past for to better understand the Cold War.

As Professor Merritt stated, "Defenders of the Soviet system have all too often played Stalin's game, excusing — or, rather, ''explaining'' — the gulag as a direct descendant of the czarist Siberian exile system. But Applebaum's numbers tell their own story: on the eve of the 1917 revolution, under the czar, only 28,600 convicts were serving sentences of hard labor, compared with the millions committed to the gulag under Lenin and Stalin. At some point numbers matter, quantity becomes quality. It is simply wrong to maintain that the gulag was nothing more than a modernized version of its czarist predecessor."

Gulag is an important part of the 20th century and we should know the history of the Soviet Union as we know the history of Nazis Germany. This past is helping to shape the present world. Understand the past; we can better manage the future.