Library service isn't free, but nobody uses it for free either. Any person has to get there and wear something too; I doubt I get any books had I appeared naked before librarians. So there are some inevitable costs already and they are certainly paid. Same inevitable costs are also paid if someone reads online encyclopedia: the person must have a computer and software and Internet access. These 'technical costs' are dull and uninteresting: they are always paid either by the 'reader' himself or someone responsible of him.
But the $20 a month we're talking about seem to be of different kind. They aren't charged now, why they should? Well, maintaining Wikipedia requires some hardware and labor. But it seems the 'library' scheme works well for Wikipedia, doesn't it? The scheme is essentially that: run a service by a community and serve the whole community in more effective way than if the service provider were private and had to charge every single reader separately.
Besides, such a scheme also has a special advantage: a person doesn't have to pay anything (except the inevitable technical costs) to get served. It's exactly as with children -- they don't have to work for their food, it's enough for them to be hungry to get almost universally accepted right to be fed. This is the the most human way to do things; unfortunately not even all children get it. But it's a good aim anyway.
You'd better not to rely on Solzhenitsyn on this point. The numbers that serious historians have been figuring out don't even come close to this huge one. According to Zemskov the whole number of imprisoned and executed for 'political' (counter-revolution) crimes during 33 years (1921-1953, most of which was Stalin's rule) was about 3,8 million: about 3 million imprisoned and about 800 thousand executed. These numbers also includes real enemies, such as post-revolution saboteurs, Nazi spies, war-time traitors, etc. Zemskov's study is based on about several hundred thousands 'low-level' GULAG archive documents and it's impossible to claim all of them are fake.
60 and other 'millions' (some authors manage to get even 100 millions) approximations are based mainly on such ridiculous methods as to take population growth rate of some year (say, 1900) and to extrapolate it to a period of fifty years, then compare the calculated result with the real one and blame Stalin of killing all these 'missing' people.
The topic is still hot in Russian political Internet forums and there is a great number of web-pages devoted to this question, so one able to read Russian can probably dig up himself what he believes is the truth. I did:)
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Library service isn't free, but nobody uses it for free either. Any person has to get there and wear something too; I doubt I get any books had I appeared naked before librarians. So there are some inevitable costs already and they are certainly paid. Same inevitable costs are also paid if someone reads online encyclopedia: the person must have a computer and software and Internet access. These 'technical costs' are dull and uninteresting: they are always paid either by the 'reader' himself or someone responsible of him.
But the $20 a month we're talking about seem to be of different kind. They aren't charged now, why they should? Well, maintaining Wikipedia requires some hardware and labor. But it seems the 'library' scheme works well for Wikipedia, doesn't it? The scheme is essentially that: run a service by a community and serve the whole community in more effective way than if the service provider were private and had to charge every single reader separately.
Besides, such a scheme also has a special advantage: a person doesn't have to pay anything (except the inevitable technical costs) to get served. It's exactly as with children -- they don't have to work for their food, it's enough for them to be hungry to get almost universally accepted right to be fed. This is the the most human way to do things; unfortunately not even all children get it. But it's a good aim anyway.
You'd better not to rely on Solzhenitsyn on this point. The numbers that serious historians have been figuring out don't even come close to this huge one. According to Zemskov the whole number of imprisoned and executed for 'political' (counter-revolution) crimes during 33 years (1921-1953, most of which was Stalin's rule) was about 3,8 million: about 3 million imprisoned and about 800 thousand executed. These numbers also includes real enemies, such as post-revolution saboteurs, Nazi spies, war-time traitors, etc. Zemskov's study is based on about several hundred thousands 'low-level' GULAG archive documents and it's impossible to claim all of them are fake.
:)
60 and other 'millions' (some authors manage to get even 100 millions) approximations are based mainly on such ridiculous methods as to take population growth rate of some year (say, 1900) and to extrapolate it to a period of fifty years, then compare the calculated result with the real one and blame Stalin of killing all these 'missing' people.
The topic is still hot in Russian political Internet forums and there is a great number of web-pages devoted to this question, so one able to read Russian can probably dig up himself what he believes is the truth. I did