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The Gulag Archipelago Paperback – January 1, 2003
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The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn's masterwork, a vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators and also of heroism, a Stalinist anti-world at the heart of the Soviet Union where the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair.
The work is based on the testimony of some two hundred survivors, and on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn's own eleven years in labour camps and exile. It is both a thoroughly researched document and a feat of literary and imaginative power. This edition has been abridged into one volume at the author's wish and with his full co-operation.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe Harvill Press
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2003
- Dimensions5.31 x 1.38 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-101843430851
- ISBN-13978-1843430858
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This book is a horrifying and haunting tale of what could be on deck if Americans don't stand up now. I encourage anyone to read it just to get a small taste of what went on in the Soviet Union, and to understand truly what communism is and what it does/has done to people, but I think it is especially pertinent to the USA as we face down a pseudo maoist cultural revolution that China saw in the 1960s. Between this and the words of the infamous KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, I would say the USA is well into the second 'destabilization' phase and has even entered into the third phase of 'crisis.' I truly would advise people to read these books as a warning, and to take Alexander Solzhenitsyn's words seriously as we face the rest of 2020 and beyond:
"I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust and prevent those wise persons who are attempting to establish even finer degrees of justice and even finer legal shades of equality - some because of their distorted outlook, others because of short-sightedness and still others out of self-interest - from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road. Because they are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat - one which has never been seen before in the history of the world."
Though written by a Russian, though sprawling, this book is not dense or hard to read or boring. It's not even depressing in the way that we expect from Russian fiction (this is nonfiction), except of course you have to go into it expecting that you are going to read about the gulags, which include some of the most horrifying conditions, both physical and mental, in modern history. A lot of what is contained in this book are stories of experiences had by people who didn't make it out. There was so much suffering, drama, and heroism that happened in Soviet Russia, which just went down the memory hole forever. Solzhenitsyn records some of these stories, those he personally happened to have access to, for posterity.
Get it, read it slow steps, however much you can stand to read at a time, and meditate on the lessons. Then keep it on your shelf to return to as needed.
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I first became acquainted with Solzhenitsyn’s writings whilst a pupil at a well-regarded grammar school in the Home Counties in the 1970s. My third-year class studied ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH, which documents a typical day in the life of a prisoner in the “special” camps in which Solzhenitsyn served eight years as an “Article 58er” (basically an anti-Soviet agitator). It interested me sufficiently follow it up with GULAG, to which IVAN DENISOVICH is effectively a prequel. So I purchased a copy in Foyles Bookshop back in late 1976 and read it over the subsequent six months. It really does make IVAN DENISOVICH seem rather tame. Unfortunately, I gave the book away some years after reading it, but the invention of e-books and my recent retirement gave me the money and time to purchase it and re-read it.
What struck me in the ‘70s, and now, were the similarities between the attitudes and mindsets of the GULAGs and those which I encountered daily at my school. Was this surprising? Not really, when you consider that many of the parents and teachers of the time had served in prisoner of war camps, albeit more likely German rather than Russian ones. Let’s look at just two examples. The main weapon of torture against GULAG prisoners was the cold. Prisoners working in mine shafts had to strip naked, have cold water poured over them and run naked to their compound. This evokes memories of the compulsory showers that pupils had to endure after compulsory games three days a week, even in midwinter. Not only was the water freezing, the teachers would walk round the changing rooms, obviously “checking out” the naked teenage bodies of their pupils. In Stalinist Russia, the state was always right and its subjects always wrong. Every complaint ever made to a camp chief was somehow proven wrong. This sounds like a parallel to my school experience, where a succession of complaints about sex abuse by a “Jimmy Saville” teacher were dismissed for alleged “lack of evidence” even though they had been well documented with dates and times. The offender was caught, pleaded guilty and jailed – 20 years later. Sexual abuse of women prisoners was commonplace in GULAGs ; many women got favourable treatment in return for granting sexual favours to male guards.
The GULAG experience stayed in prisoners’ minds for many years afterwards. Solzhenitsyn deserves kudos for recognising that the human defence mechanism does not allow such experiences to be forgotten. In Volume 3, he appeals to fellow writers not to write that people discharged from camps have forgotten it all and are happy. Absolutely true, and a parallel to some of my unfortunate classmates who were on anti-depressants for a long time after leaving the school,
With free speech now under serious threat from moral totalitarianism, GULAG is actually more relevant now than it has ever been. In Volume 1, Solzhenitsyn recalls a case of a university lecturer losing his job for quoting Lenin, but not Stalin, in a lecture. The parallels with what is happening now, with academics losing their jobs and receiving death threats for questioning the wisdom of gender self-identification, and stating the biologically provable fact that only women can get pregnant, are alarming. A central message of GULAG is that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Now, it would seem, is a good time to reiterate that message and read this book, to which I award five well-deserved stars.
Denisovich is a simple story of the daily misery of life in a Siberian camp. This gives a lot more detail on that, but more importantly it also gives the background. You could be going about your business and policemen would come up and ask for a word. Knowing you had done nothing wrong, you'd go along with them happily - but what you didn't know was they had a quota to fill and you were it. There is a story of a meeting where Stalin's name was mentioned, at which everyone started clapping - and this went on, and on, and on. Eventually one person at the top table felt he had clapped enough. It was noted that he was the first to stop clapping and he was soon in a camp. No-one was safe for a moment.
The evils of the Gulag were known as early as about 1920, thanks to escapees who wrote of their experiences - but that didn't stop the useful idiots of the left praising Soviet Russia to the rooftops. They should rot in hell for such wickedness. There was no significant difference between Russia under Lenin and Stalin, and Germany under Hitler.
It can't be called a fun read but it's engrossing start to finish.

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