The Gulag Archipelago Two (1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation III-IV) [Paperback]

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (Author), Thomas P. Whitney (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Best Nonfiction Book of the Twentieth Century" -- Time magazine

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006092103X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060921033
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,371,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the Back Cover, May 30, 2008

By 

Emily Rounds "Emirou'sBooks" (Duluth, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gulag Archipelago Two (1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation III-IV) (Paperback)

"...may well be Solzhenitsyn's most stunning acheivement." --Time

In "The Destructive-Labor Camps," the first part of this volume, we experience the terrible plight of the working prisoners, the cruelty and caprice of camp authorities, and the tragic fate of the women prisoners and the luckless children born to them.

This chronicle of inhumanity is made bearable by the vitality and emotional range of Solzhenitsyn's writing that make his work on the "Archipelago" of Soviet repression one of the extraordinary literary events of our age.

"The Soul and Barbed Wire," the second part of this volume, is a magnificent statement on the possibilities of purification and redemption through suffering.

It was at the threshold of the camps that the first volume of GULAG left us. GULAG TWO takes us inside them.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gulag Mini-Encyclopedia. Debunks Gulag Whitewashes, September 24, 2008

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Gulag Archipelago Two (1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation III-IV) (Paperback)

This review is based on the original 1970's English-language Harper & Row edition.

There is so much here about Russian history, Soviet thinking and policies, and the situation inside the Gulags. Because there are so many topics and issues raised in this combined volume, I will elaborate on only a few of them.

Solzhenitsyn rarely mentions Gulag Poles in this set of volumes. In one year, 2,100 Zolotisty Polish inmates had been reduced to 168 survivors (p. 131).

The Soviet concentration camps have sometimes been favorably compared to the Nazi German ones by western liberals. We hear, for instance, that at least the children were well treated. Tell that to the Gulag children, some imprisoned for political crimes at the dangerous age of six! (p. 463). Besides physical suffering, Gulag children underwent severe de-moralization, in effect becoming amoral beasts (e. g., p. 452). Finally: "They didn't hesitate to liquidate the `kulak' families right down to tiny children, and they even wrote about it proudly in the newspapers." (pp. 370-371).

Communist apologists have claimed that Gulag deaths were caused largely by passive negligence, Soviet-system inefficiencies, wartime disruptions and privations, etc. This is nonsense. To illustrate: "...police dogs are fed better than prisoners..." (p. 534).

Well, at least there were no gas chambers in the Gulags. But so what? They weren't needed. Referring to the primitive state of Gulag life, labor, and death, Solzhenitsyn quipped: "That's what our gas execution van consisted of. We didn't have any gas for the gas chamber." (p. 91). In describing the Belomor Canal project, Solzhenitsyn commented: "Stalin simply needed a great construction project SOMEWHERE which would devour many working hands and many lives (the surplus of people as a result of the liquidation of the kulaks), with the reliability of the gas execution van but more cheaply, and which would at the same time leave a great monument to his reign of the same general sort as the pyramids." (p. 86. Emphasis his).

Some have argued that there was no Gulag equivalent to the Nazi death camps--no camps to which admission absolutely guaranteed death. In fact, there were. "Certain work brigades (Ogurtsov) died off totally, including the brigadiers." (p. 221). Also: "The real Solovki was in the logging operations, at the remote work sites. But it is precisely those distant backwoods that are most difficult to learn about nowadays, because THOSE people did not survive." (p. 54. Emphasis his). "During the war years (on war rations), the camp inmates called three weeks at logging `DRY EXECUTION.'" (p. 199. Emphasis his). "We are not able to enumerate the countless logging camps. They constituted half the Archipelago." (p. 593).

Solzhenitsyn cites 15 million Gulag inmates, at any one time, based on the ROSSIYA-SSSR encyclopedia--a figure also endorsed by former inmates (p. 205). According to émigré Professor of Statistics Kurganov, the Gulag claimed 66,000,000 lives from 1917 to 1959 (p. 10).