Russian State TV Host Says Gulags Were Nicer Than Nazi Concentration Camps

A top Kremlin propagandist has claimed that Soviet gulags were better than Nazi concentration camps on Russian state television.

Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor, shared the clip on Twitter on Saturday, where it has since amassed more than 250,000 views.

Alongside it, Davis wrote that the "latest propaganda assignment seems to be 'Everything is better in Russia.'

"Propagandists are taking turns giving examples. Without a hint of irony, host Vladimir Solovyov explained why Soviet Gulags were better than German concentration camps."

Solovyov is a Russian television presenter whose pro-Kremlin views have earned him the nickname "Putin's voice."

"In Soviet labor camps, they knew your name, and under which law you were imprisoned," Solovyov said in the clip, according to Davis' translation.

"You were an individual. In German concentration camps, you had no individuality."

He went on to say that the "goal of the Soviet camp was to re-educate," while German concentration camps "had the goal of destroying you as a person and then to break you down into parts."

Solovyov said Ukrainians were "walking down the same path."

"Now, the descendants of the Nazi idea in Europe talk about us as orcs, talk about us as the citizens of Russia, all of whom have to bear the responsibility," he said.

"They're walking down the same path, they don't see us as individuals. They don't see us as people. Dehumanization. Denial of our right to be ourselves."

This, he said, was the "main difference between us and them."

"Ukraine that is diseased with Nazism doesn't see us as a people. For them, we are orcs, Rashists, but we still pity them," he said. "We still count them as ours, but lost with their heads not screwed on right. We hate the sin, but not the sinner. This is why we will win because we see the people. We fight for their souls." Solovyov could not immediately be reached for further comment.

The Gulag—the notorious Soviet system of forced labor camps–was created under Vladimir Lenin but peaked during Jospeh Stalin's rule in the 1930s and 1940s.

Historians estimate that as many as 18 million people were incarcerated and at least 1.5 million died.

Conditions were brutal, with many inmates worked to death while many others were executed.

BBC broadcaster John Simpson responded to the clip by saying Solovyov "gets loonier by the day."

"Poor old Vladimir Solovyov gets loonier by the day on Russian TV," Simpson wrote in a tweet. "Maintaining that the appalling Soviet-era Gulags were somehow morally better than Nazi concentration camps is probably an argument best avoided."

Journalist Claire Berlinski wrote: "This is such pure Solovyov that watching it is like drinking Everclear."

Last month, Solovyov said Russia was fighting a war against NATO as a whole and that Russia has "liberated over 20 percent of Ukraine's territory" and "around 10 million Ukrainian citizens from Nazi authorities."