Agree, more or less.
Murder by shooting or anything else seems far, far less common than deaths on the march or from overwork or poor conditions of all sorts.
Deaths after leaving the camp should be considered. On some reports, inmates in poor condition were released to avoid a death in camp, to maintain camp figures at an acceptable rate.
On other reports, the aged, very young and others at greater risk were released early from many camps. The GULAG system operated on a harsh basis but, despite Solzhenitsyn et al , it never operated on any basis remotely like the Nazi death camps. Indeed, many GULAGs probably weren’t any worse than some US prison farms during the same period
In comparison, the US concealed the reality of the Japanese internment camps which is now fairly well known. Different death rates, but just as vicious in treating their own citizens without establishing any hostile intent towards the nation, apart from ethnicity.
Pretty much what we did in Australia with enemy aliens in both wars, but hardly anybody here knows or cares now about that neat little denial of justice and humanity.
More important questions about the GULAGS are:
Why did they exist?
Who went there?
For what?
It’s all very well comparing POW deaths with GULAGS, apart from the problem that none of the combatants apart from the USSR held general POW’s in 1956 or for years before. Because Stalin took his war reparations in slavery for ten years after the war, by agreement with the other Allies. So, is it just the Soviets who have dirty hands?
The proper comparison from about 1947-8 at the latest is with civilian prisons in the West.
For all I know, it might favour the USSR.
After all, the US routinely used prisoners between and during the wars for medical experiments, maybe after WWII.
Nobody had clean hands by today’s standards.
It’s just a question of who is least dirty.