by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
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Product Description
Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression -- the state within the state that ruled all-powerfully. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims -- men, women, and children -- we encounter secret police operations, labor camps and prisons; the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the "welcome" that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Yet we also witness the astounding moral courage of the incorruptible, who, defenseless, endured great brutality and degradation. The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 -- a grisly indictment of a regime, fashioned here into a veritable literary miracle -- has now been updated with a new introduction that includes the fall of the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn's move back to Russia.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Time's Top Non-Fiction Book of the 20th Century , 2008-11-15
This review refers only to Volume 3 (Sections 5 thru 7)
This amazing volume chronicles Solzhenitsyn's years in a Siberian labor camp for political prisoners and later in exile, a limbo status, where the state's support of physical needs is withdrawn, but the prisoner's reentry into mainstream society isn't allowed because of his status as a former prisoner. The final section takes place after Stalin's death in 1953, when both those in power and in prison were trying to figure how what to do in the absence of the mastermind of the Soviet Union's system of internal terror.
Soltzhenitsyn describes with alternating wit, pain, sarcasm, challenge the life of a zek (this story is also presented in his much shorter "A Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich", which in the years after the death of Joseph Stalin was actually accepted by the Soviet government for awhile). For awhile common criminals were mixed with politicals - their sentences were generally shorter than the "quarters" (25 years) given to the politicals, and they were useful to prison management as stoolies.
Often soldiers recently released from German prison camps were imprisoned for political offenses. After his release from political prison, Solzhenitsyn surreptitiously collected information from other former prisoners about conditions in other camps and about ethnic cleansing programs around the Soviet Union. Their tales are harrowing. Detainees in one camp actually managed to take it over from its local management, who showed sympathy to their plight. Upper level Soviet officials visited the camp for "negotiations", after which they "agreed" to meet all demands. You can guess what happened next.
The Soviet Union may have lost 20 million citizens in combat, but Stalin's program of political terror must have killed at least as many more.
Of any man who lived, Solzhenitsyn probably did the most to expose the brutal nature of the Soviet regime, particularly that of Joseph Stalin, who in the rest of the world enjoyed status as Papa Joe, leader of part of the Allied forces that defeated Nazi Germany. His efforts to publish the Gulag Archipelago were always in jeopardy. As such he never had the entire manuscript in one place, making of the great political documents of the 20th century that much more remarkable.
Despite its length (Volume 3 alone runs to about 600 pages in hardback) and grim subject matter, I found Gulag Archipelago relatively readable. Solzhenistyn's personal style - much is written like he was telling you the stories face to face. Five stars for all readers, if only to highlight the dangers of a totalitarian government that spies and imprisons its citizens for their political and religious beliefs in name of ideology.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Encyclopedic in Scope. Please Click on Links Below to My Unabridged-Version Reviews, 2008-09-25
Instead of repeating other reviewers, let's consider some details related to comparison of Nazi and Communist camps, Russian history, Soviet geopolitics, etc. Please read my detailed, annotated reviews of the three original, unabridged, sets of volumes. Click on:
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 I-II
Gulag Archipelago, Two : III-IV
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Parts V-VII
Enjoy!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A soul-shaking earthquake of a book..., 2008-08-30
What can be added to what has already been celebrated about this book? I'm only embarrassed to have read the abridged version, somewhat mockingly--even if authorized by Solzhenitsyn--referred to by the author as offered to those too busy in our modern world to read the entire text.
Nonetheless, this abridged *Gulag Archipelago* is as powerful a document of human evil and the capacity...if we dare...of the human capacity to transcend that evil as has ever been written. Part horror story, part Russian history, part holy book, *The Gulag Archipelago* is virtually an alternate Bible penned by a man who has the moral authority of an Old Testament prophet.
With savage satire and a well-earned bitterness that makes absolutely no attempt to conceal his unmitigated contempt and outrage, Solzhenitsyn vents the long-repressed, apocalyptic anger of a man whose witnessed--and suffered--first-hand the worst indignities that man can inflict upon fellow men.
*The Gulag Archipelago* isn't only about Stalinist totalitarianism, it's about totalitarianism as it exists everywhere--even within our own hearts. Solzhenitsyn appeals to his readers to examine--honestly and uncompromisingly--their conscience to see the wrongs we've committed and the wrongs we've been complicit by turning the other way. Evil is not "out there" in some other government, some other people, or person--it's a potential within all of us, all the time, as is the good we might access instead to stand up to it.
*The Gulag Archipelago* was a dangerous book when it was written and it's still a dangerous book today--dangerous because of its universality, its individuality, its radical apolitical morality. It's a book that should be required reading in every school--but never will be--because it teaches us to beware, not of this or that political regime, but of *all* political regimes, of all power, of all concentrated authority, of all complacency in the face of injustice and the oppression so often committed in the name of the "common good."
If you don't have time to read the unabridged text, this shortened--not quite 500 pages--version will be more than enough to convince you that someday you should, that *The Gulag Archipelago* is, indeed, one of the greatest, noblest, most important calls to conscience ever written.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
The single greatest literary work of the twentieth century., 2008-07-23
The title of this review is truly the way I feel about this book. The first volume relates stories of arrest and interrogation, the second volume tells of life in the camps, and the third talks of life in internal exile.
The second volume, in particular, is at times haunting and at others uplifting in ways that are absolutely beyond description. The story of the woman who was set aside to starve to death simply because she "wasn't worth her bread ration" is one of the many that will stay with you forever.
The book was absolutely earth-shattering when it was published as the Soviet Union was still at the height of its power, but in bringing forth reports of Stalin's brutality it creates universal, timeless themes. Anyone who wishes to understand the human experience and to truly examine one's own soul must read this book.
In this book Solzhenitsyn describes the intelligentsia as those who are preoccupied with the spiritual side of life. Reading this book will focus you on the spiritual in ways you could never imagine. A beautiful, stunning work. Monumental.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A STYLISTIC ACHIEVEMENT ALSO, 2008-05-14
The original three volumes of this book changed my life, my world, my soul. There is little I can add to what others have already said except for one thing. This bitter humor, the voice of incredulity, the moments when Stalin's mask slips (for instance a scientific article are about the discovery of a frozen mammoth in the Siberian tundra and the casual reference to how it tasted - only Gulag prisoners would eat a 10,000 year old mammoth).
Overall let me put it this way. This is the greatest exercise in SUSTAINED IRONIC TONE in the history of literature. The derisive, incredulous, witnessing voice never stops digging for the Truth.
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