Work camps

You mean prison. Work camp is nonsense used to demonise non western countries as barbaric (and often used in an attempt to evoke images of the nazi extermination machine even when they are not at all the same). Also what was progressive in the 40s 50s and 60s would be regressive by today's standard yet that doesn't mean it wasn't progressive for the time.

It's worth noting that the USSR ended the Gulag system in the 1960s while capitalist countries like the united states continue to use prison as a means for cheap (practically unpaid) forced labor. Soviet prisoners were also paid comparable wages to free workers not only out of principle but so they would not be severely disadvantaged once out of prison.

Soviet prisons were generally more progressive than western prisons, especially considering western countries were largely colonial powers (and are now neocolonial powers). Soviets even viewed handcuffs as barbaric and paid prisoners wages comparable to outside wages, the compulsion for work was out of a belief that work itself is good. They didn't treat prison labor the same way the US does today, for pennies a day.