Though his campaigns in Gaul did not last for as much as ten complete years, in this time he took by storm more than 800 cities, subdued 300 nations, and fought pitched battles at various times with 3 million men, of whom he destroyed one million in the actual fighting and took another million prisoners.
Mass deportations of peasants for purposes of punishment coincided with the mass use of forced labor in the Soviet economy. In 1931, the special settlements and the concentration camps were merged into a single system, known as the Gulag. The Gulag, which the Soviets themselves called a “system of concentration camps,” began alongside the collectivization of agriculture and depended upon it. It would eventually include 476 camp complexes, to which some eighteen million people would be sentenced, of whom between a million and a half and three million would die during their periods of incarceration. The free peasant became the slave laborer, engaged in the construction of the giant canals, mines, and factories that Stalin believed would modernize the Soviet Union.
In his world, there was no such thing as a "small thing". Doing your homework was a mission. Cleaning the bathroom was a mission. Getting groceries from the supermarket was a mission. And scrubbing a floor? It was never just about scrubbing a floor- it was your ability to follow orders,to exhibit self-discipline,and to complete a task with the utmost perfection. "Ninety nine percent is the same as zero" was one of his favorite sayings.
Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit.... The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the center of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind—for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic-religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of.
One indicator that the level of economic exchange was quite small: as late as 1820, the total carrying capacity of all the world’s ships was around 5.9 million metric tons. The corresponding figure in 2018 was 322 times higher—and those ships, traveling much faster, were likely to complete many more voyages in a single year.
