There were common criminals in some of the the KZ camps as well.
And yes, Stalin and the GULAG system during his time was as bad as Hitler. Make no mistake about that. A simple victim count is enough.
But yes, I have never heard about GULAG tattoos. No point in tattoing people you're about to work to death anyway.
yes it was bad: 14 million people passed through the Gulag "labour camps" from 1929 to 1953, 6to 78 million deported to remote areas in the USSR
1.6 million could have died
[bI don't know about gulag tattoos...I know the Russian prisons are notorious for tattoos, but not sure about the gulags. But the people there were not just "common" criminals. They were the result of Stalin's paranoia. They were just common people caught in a mess. Many of them did nothing more than being born to parents who were revolutionaries or they were born in a foreign country, or they bothered to educate themselves on what was happening around them. Read "The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin" by Adam Hochschild. Just finished it and it really shows how most of the people in gulags were just really average people caught in the bad situation.
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Petty criminals were sent there and jokes about the Soviet government and officials were punishable by imprisonment.
And there were tattoos:
http://www.amazon.com/Danzig-Baldaev-Drawings-Damon-Murray/dp/09563562 49
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