Came across this in r/communism.
They basically claim that gulag workers were compensated at market rates and had 8 hour days. Is there any merit to that?
They actually cite among other things a CIA report ( page 3, article 13 )p
Well, yes, they were paid, but it's technically true the way a lot of ideologically-motivated historical claims are technically true while being functionally meaningless. Before 1950, pay was based on the amount of work done rather than hours worked, and was not substantial; for instance, 3 rubles per cubic meter of wood chopped down in the forest, several rubles a day as a 'bonus' for exceeding quota. As Sira Stepanovna Balashina recalled in her 2004 interview for Gheith & Jolluck's Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Incarceration and Exile, oftentimes her pay was directly in bread rather than cash (Gheith & Jolluck, 27) As their own source reminds us, "The tying of consumption to work performance in camps where inmates were already close to subsistence would represent a combination of material incentives and coercion. The “stick” in this case would be that if you worked poorly, your rations could be reduced below subsistence to leave you a victim either of starvation or a starvation-related disease." (Borodkin & Ertz, 5) Further, compensation was explicitly not at market rate. Again in that poster's own source, it is shown that forced-labor wages were between 15 and 30 percent of free labor wages for similar work, except for managerial roles (often given to those with connections or clout) which could earn up to 70 percent of equivalent free wages. (Borodkin & Ertz, 13-15)
Leaving aside the matter of wages and workdays, the high inmate mortality rates and aforementioned practice of malnutrition as punishment ought to make us look askance at attempts to rehabilitate the forced-labor system. Wages are no good, market rate or not, if one-third of your "coworkers" perish from malnutrition or exposure (as seems to have been the case with Crimean Tatars who were not prepared for the cold when they were displaced to camps in Siberia for instance).
As /u/International_KB and /u/TheZizekiest have expounded on in the past (albeit in a less rigorous sub), the subreddit in question (to which I will not link directly based on their track record of brigading, doxxing, and harassment) has a tenuous relationship with historical truth & the abuse of sources towards contrived ends. This post is no exception.
https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3hncq3/the_repetition_of_meaningless_ideologies_is_no/