[trhway]

>The west industrialized without gulags.

it was called "colony" back then and Western Europe was doing it for several centuries. For example the wonderful rubber being a major part of the European technological leap at the end of 19th - beginning of 20th century was produced in Belgian Congo where not doing your daily quota would for example result in your family members mutilated or killed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48533964

"How to get that rubber, as much and as quickly as possible?

In the absence of scruples, the answer was distressingly simple. Send armed men to a village, kidnap the women and children, and if their menfolk did not bring back enough rubber, chop off a hand - or kill a family."