Well, aside from other possibilities, it's not clear those numbers as represented are even close to correct — or even transcribed correctly. Quickly looking up one of the cited sources for the Tsarist mortality rates (Wheatcroft's "The Crisis of the Late Tsarist Penal System") shows that the numbers given are per thousand prisoners. So Wheatcroft has in Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.2 a peak in 1892 of about 60 death per thousand population — which is to say, 6%, not 60%.

I have no clue about the other data, but by itself this suggests there is some gross misunderstanding going on here. (Tsarist prisoners were no walk in the park, but they did not have ~60% mortality rates.) Gulag death rates are themselves highly contested, and the official Soviet figures are frequently considered to be likely undercounting, but that is a separate issue. It is unlikely that a simple meme is going to capture this kind of complexity very well, much less one that is (in its misguided way) appearing to try and present the Gulag system in a positive light.