The Gulag Archipelago

I think it's appropriate that my first book post will be about The Gulag Archipelago, because it is quite possibly the most unique and amazing book I've ever read. Just the story of the book itself, apart from the subject matter, is fascinating.

Gulag was written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet Army officer who was arrested near the end of WWII for privately criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend. As a result, he spent 11 years in the Soviet labor camp system (the Gulag). It is a lengthy book, which in unabridged form fills three volumes. Of course, he wasn't able to start writing until he was released, so while he was a prisoner he would fill a page with things he wanted to remember, memorize what he'd written, and then erase it. Using this method, combined with other memorization techniques, he was able to remember thousands of lines worth of writing. Once he was able to start writing, he still had to write the book secretly and hid parts of the manuscript in many different places in an effort to thwart the attempts of the secret police to confiscate it. Once completed, Gulag was distributed underground among groups of people throughout the Soviet Union and was eventually published in the West in 1973.

Gulag is hard to categorize, because it covers so much ground. Solzhenitsyn describes the experience in a chronological fashion, starting with arrest, interrogation and initial imprisonment. He relates his own experiences along each step of the way and also includes the experiences of others he met or who sent him letters with their stories. He combed through whatever limited and censored sources were available and tried to extract the truth from amidst all the lies, distortions, and omissions . He essentially took it upon himself to document the Gulag in every aspect, because he knew otherwise the story might never be told. And what a story it is.

The Soviet Union's Gulag system was unparalleled in its vastness and cruelty. A network of prisons and labor camps was spread throughout the Soviet Union, but especially in the frigid north and east which were filled with valuable natural resources, but lacked infrastructure. Millions of people were trapped in this "meat grinder" as it was known among prisoners. Most were completely innocent of any conceivable crime. In fact, in the twisted world of the Gulag, those who actually were criminals were an elite group classified as "socially friendly" by the authorities while all other prisoners, i.e. those jailed for so-called political offenses, were classified as "enemies of the people." Much of the Soviet Union's famously rapid industrialization was accomplished through the use of the slave labor the Gulag provided. It is hard not to notice the irony that the first system in the world set up to be a "worker's paradise" actually rested upon a foundation of slave labor where countless numbers of people were literally worked to death.

It is impossible to do this book justice with this little introduction. It is not an easy or happy book to read, but I think it is such an important part of history that everyone should read it. It is important that we never forget the depth of evil that resulted from Communism, and that we never forget those who had the courage to resist and who maintained their humanity in the midst of the most inhumane circumstances.