Customer Reviews

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Parts I-II

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The Archipelago refers to many great ports scattered from the
Bering Strait to Bosporus.There were thousands of small islands where people were transported for varying periods of time.
In addition, there were transit prisons at Ust-Usa and portable
confinements by rail.

Prisoners were subjected to extensive methods of interrogation
including sleep deprivation at night, persuasion, humiliation,
cursing, long periods of standing, sound effects, lighting and
general confusion. Trials were quick and often it was difficult
to access witnesses because they were scattered or in prison
themselves.

People in every station of life were imprisoned for a variety
of reasons- most of them directed to criticism of the State.
Tanya Khodkevich was imprisoned for saying:
" you can pray freely,
But just so G-d alone can hear'
Students were arrested for criticism of the system.
Historians; such as, Platonov and Gotye were arrested.
The Buryat-Monguls were imprisoned in Kazakhstan. Tribal
members of the Northern Caucasus were jailed. People were
convicted by analogy, place of birth/origin or contact
with persons considered "dangerous" to the State.

The work is a testament to the implementation of power in the
Soviet State from Lenin onward. It is written in a
belles lettres style-much like a continuous story. The volume is
highly recommended for a wide audience of college students,
historians, journalists and readers of great literature.

My review is based on the 1973 Harper & Row hardback version.

This monumental work and successive volumes (reviewed also by me), provide priceless information about the Gulags, arcane details about Russian history, insights into Soviet thinking and policies, etc. I can only touch on a few of these.

Anti-Christians never tire of bringing up the Spanish Inquisition. Yet this most severe of inquisitions paled in comparison not only with the killings under Communism, but even with just the deeds of the Cheka further limited to early post-Revolution times. "...in a period of sixteen months (June 1918 to October 1919) more than sixteen thousand persons were shot, which is to say MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND A MONTH...during the eighty years of the Inquisition's peak effort (1420 to 1498), in all of Spain ten thousand persons were condemned to be burned at the stake--in other words, about ten a month." (p. 435; emphasis his).

Some Communist apologists have claimed that Communism "went bad" only because of Stalin, and that, had Trotsky (Bronshtein) ruled instead, Communism would've been rosy. In actuality, Trotsky wasn't substantially different from Stalin. Solzhenitsyn quotes Trotsky as saying: "'Terror is a powerful means of policy and one would have to be a hypocrite not to understand this.'" (p. 300). Also: "The terror Trotsky inspired as Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council was something he acquired very cheaply, and does not at all demonstrate any true strength of character or courage." (p. 410).

The 1939 Soviet conquest of Poland's Kresy had been justified as a protection of the Byelorussians and Ukrainians (and, of course, liberation from those big, bad "Polish landlords"). Ironic to this, Solzhenitsyn condemns the imprisonment of successful members of those groups, and of Poles, which, he admits, led to Katyn. (p. 77). Otherwise, he rarely mentions Gulag Poles (e. g., p. 81, 86).

Solzhenitsyn has choice words about Teheran and Yalta: "In their own countries Roosevelt and Churchill are honored as embodiments of statesmanlike wisdom. To us, in our Russian prison conversations, their consistent shortsightedness and stupidity stood out as astonishingly obvious. How could they, in their decline from 1941 to 1945, fail to secure any guarantees whatsoever of the independence of Eastern Europe?" (p. 259).

Contrary to his portrayal as a "Russian nationalist" (who, one would think, would adopt a blame-the-victim approach), Solzhenitsyn is very candid about both old and new Russian imperialisms against Poland: "Still worse: In October, 1944, the Germans threw in Kaminsky's brigade--with its Moslem units--to suppress the Warsaw Uprising. While one group of Russians sat traitorously dozing behind the Vistula, watching the death of Warsaw through their binoculars, other Russians crushed the Uprising. Hadn't the Poles had enough Russian villainy to bear in the nineteenth century without having to endure more of it in the twentieth? For that matter, was that the last of it? Perhaps more is still to come." (p. 257). God forbid!

I bought this book as a gift and the person I gave it to loved it. The condition was excellent. I would buy again from this seller.

The powers that be in the good old USA seem to have read this book and borrowed a few tricks from it. Like coming into people's houses in the middle of the night, when they are most disoriented and the neighbors cannot see what is going on, and dragging them away from their families. Yes, it is being done to immigrants all the time.