George_Chabot's Full Review: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn - Gulag Archipelago 1918...
The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of the most significant authors of the twentieth century, if not of all time. This book was the reason he was booted out of the Soviet Union. I believe it was published in the USA in 1971.
This huge book, which Solzhenitsyn produced surreptitiously while under the watchful eye of his jailors, details the history of the Soviet Gulag (prison) system which was responsible for more deaths than Adolph Hitler ever dreamed about.
Starting in 1918, under the first dictator, Lenin, the vast concentration camp system swallowed Soviet prisoners wholesale, many never to be seen again. Solshenitsyn fills in tantalizing details about the disappearance of many prominent figures in Soviet history, including the infamous Secret Police Chief (Cheka, OGPU) Felix Dzherzinski, successor (NKVD) and brief dictator Lavrenti Beria, and the enigmatic Sydney Reilly, Ace of Spies, made famous by the television mini-series starring Sam Neill. According to Solzhenitsyn, these men were shot in the head and buried in shallow graves near Ljubjanka prison.
Solzhenitsyn names names, dates, places, of countless occurrences of state sponsored brutality and inhumanity to its own citizens. Transportation in unheated cattle cars, inhuman living conditions, trials, coerced confessions, slave labor, starvation, torture, summary executions -- the total of dead attributed to the Stalin era is thought to be some sixty million.
By no means am I a Nazi apologist, but this book proves the Germans certainly were not breaking any new ground in their treatment of Jews. The Russians did it first, and longer, too.
The book is riveting. Even though the manuscript was produced secretly under constant surveillance in bits and pieces it has enough continuity to put some of our "notable" current authors who are not under any duress to shame.
As an admirer of history and seeker of truth, I say this book is a must read.
It is also a premonition of the way things can go unless we in America maintain constant vigilance against tyranny. Unfortunately, sometimes I think we are sleeping... zzzz-zz
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