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<\/p>\nAdidas continues to align its marketing strategy with the Soviet legacy of persecution and totalitarianism, profiting from the sale of USSR-branded products. Therefore, UCMC publishes its seventh protest visual. We encourage everyone to join this campaign and to use their network of contacts to deliver this message to the world.<\/p>\n
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The infamous \u2018Gulag\u2019 was one of the major instruments of political repression in the Soviet Union. A network of hundreds of extermination labor camps\u00a0brought together a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners and religious leaders. Between 1929 and 1953, approximately 18M people passed through the camps. Prisoners of war and internal \u2018exiles\u2019 brought this figure to over 28M. Between 1934 to 1953, up to 800 thousand people were executed for \u201cpolitical crimes\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n The number of deaths in the Gulag between 1918 and 1956 is estimated at 1.6M to 6M people.<\/p>\n This is just one example of what the USSR really was. During 70 years of Soviet rule, the populations of many nations were decimated, displaced, killed by artificial famine, tortured, persecuted, their lives, cultures, and livelihoods destroyed. The victims of the Soviet communist regime are estimated at 20 to 35M \u2013 Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Georgians, Armenians, Moldovans, Kazakhs, and many other nations suffered at the hands of the USSR.<\/p>\n Profiting from the sale of Soviet symbols is also tantamount to politically supporting Russia\u2019s attempt to resurrect the USSR through the illegal annexation of Crimea and occupation of eastern Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of over 10,000 people and the displacement of over 1,7M.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n