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Title: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Thomas P. Whitney, H. T. Willetts, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0-8133-3289-3 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: May, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (69 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Read the other reviews
Comment: This book is not a novel. It is an unusually constructed history in three volumes, written by a word-class writer. It is a heavy read. In this volume, Solzhenitsyn describes arrests, interrogations, tortures, trials, prisons, and methods of transporatation from the prisons to the labour camps. He gives a brief history of the genesis of Gulag, its principles and its expansion, in the chapter "A Brief History of Our Sewage Disposal System." Solzhenitysn marshalls an impressive range of facts and first hand anecdotes in addition to his own experiences, usually relating them in a straightforward manner, sometimes with bitter, vicious sarcasm, sometimes with passionate anger. The book is an astounding achievement, especially when one considers that he wrote it in sections, hiding each as it was completed; he was never able to refer back to what he had previously written, yet I noticed no repetitions. The book is an astounding achievement, immensely powerful, but very depressing, sometimes heart-breaking. Nonetheless, anyone who wishes to be well-informed in general, or about history in particular, must read it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Solzhenitsyn's Gulag: Well Done, But What Is It?
Comment: Reading Solzhenitsyn's GULAG ARCHIPELAGO is a daunting task, not simply because of its excessive length, but because at the conclusion, the reader is left with judging it and comprehending just what it was that he read. Solzhenitsyn sub-titles his book 'An Experiment in Literary Investigation.' As the reader plows through the author's strange mixture of compelling narrative in parts and excessive fascination with names, dates, and places in others, the reader begins to see that this investigation is a new genre. It is part autobiography, part novel, part polemic. Solzhenitsyn tries to guide the reader through a half century of the evolution of the Soviet prison system, the Gulag, by using his sewage disposal metaphor. A good idea, but the wrong metaphor. Since his work so often uses bodily phrases like 'cancer' and 'metastasizing', perhaps he might have switched to an organic one. He describes the very beginnings of the Gulag system as the core foundation for post-Revolutionary communism. It was to the gulags that waves of multi-generational opponents of first Lenin, then Stalin, were sent. Solzhenitsyn makes it clear early on the very first leaders of communism saw in the gulags a long term solution to reshaping a multi-stranded Russian society into a mono-stranded Soviet one. No one knew it then, but such an effort was doomed to fail. It is remarkable that it lasted as long as it did when Yeltsin stood atop a tank to topple the communist regime. The gulag system was a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, swallowing in huge gulps entire waves of segments of Soviet society. What is astonishing is that he reveals that most often there was no logic to the call to rounding up the usual suspects. In Soviet Russia, everyone was a usual suspect. Even members of the secret police, first called the Cheka, then the NKVD, finally morphing to the KGB, were expected to place their necks on the chopping blocks when called to do so. It was routinely assumed that if the police did not come for you today, well, tomorrow was another day. At the start of the book, 'today' occurs for Solzhenitsyn, when he is arrested for writing subversive letters. He is accosted by security officers and hustled off to a gulag where he remained for decades. While incarcerated, he learns, he thinks, he remembers a vast waterfall of details that later goes into the writing of this book. A minor criticism I have is that I wonder how, without detailed notes, he was able to retain accurately this overwhelming flow of data.
He calls Part II 'Perpetual Motion.' By this he means that Russias gulags were constantly on the prowl, ever seeking new victims. Perhaps an unspoken assumption is the circular direction of this movement. It began in lawlessness in 1918 and ends the same in 1991. Evil seems to exist for as long as it takes good men like Solzhenitsyn to be able to cry out in the night to stop the madness.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the Best!
Comment: Review by Mike, Age 13
Solzhenitsyn does an excellent job of retelling the story of the atrocities of the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago is a disturbing account of what happened inside the Gulag prisons. This is an account about the things hidden from the public and the things the Marxists wanted to keep hidden. And how he gave a first person account of prison life, well that was just amazing! His vivid descriptions about the kinds of arrests that took place I thought was very interesting and an amazing brainchild of a distorted Soviet Union!
How Stalin could turn an innocent gesture of two long lost friends being reunited into an arrest is beyond me. The Gulag Archipelago is an excellent book that unveiled an entirely new side of the Soviet Union and its perverted system of justice. It's a great book for historians and World War II buffs, or even if you are trying to find out more about the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago is quite possibly one of the best books I've ever read! I would recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in the Soviet Union. (Content will be confusing for younger readers.)
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Title: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Alexander Tvardovsky ISBN: 0451527097 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Gulag : A History by Anne Applebaum ISBN: 0767900561 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0374511993 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The First Circle by Thomas P. Whitney, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0810115905 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.05 |
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Title: The Great Terror: A Reassessment by Robert Conquest ISBN: 0195071328 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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