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Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Gulag Archipelago, Vol 2
Series:
Gulag Archipelago
Author: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Non-fiction
Pages: 648
Words: 276.5K
Containing Parts
III & IV of Solzhenitsyn’s book, The Gulag Archipelago.
From
Wikipedia.com
Structurally,
the text comprises seven sections divided (in most printed editions)
into three volumes: parts 1–2, parts 3–4, and parts 5–7. At one
level, the Gulag Archipelago traces the history of the system of
forced labor camps that existed in the Soviet Union from 1918 to
1956. Solzhenitsyn begins with V. I. Lenin’s original decrees which
were made shortly after the October Revolution; they established the
legal and practical framework for a series of camps where political
prisoners and ordinary criminals would be sentenced to forced labor.
The book then describes and discusses the waves of purges and the
assembling of show trials in the context of the development of the
greater Gulag system; Solzhenitsyn gives particular attention to its
purposive legal and bureaucratic development.
The
narrative ends in 1956 at the time of Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret
Speech (“On the Personality Cult and its Consequences”).
Khrushchev gave the speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, denouncing Stalin’s personality cult,
his autocratic power, and the surveillance that pervaded the Stalin
era. Although Khrushchev’s speech was not published in the Soviet
Union for a long time, it was a break with the most atrocious
practices of the Gulag system.
Despite
the efforts by Solzhenitsyn and others to confront the legacy of the
Gulag, the realities of the camps remained a taboo subject until the
1980s. Solzhenitsyn was also aware that although many practices had
been stopped, the basic structure of the system had survived and it
could be revived and expanded by future leaders. While Khrushchev,
the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union’s supporters in the West
viewed the Gulag as a deviation of Stalin, Solzhenitsyn and many
among the opposition tended to view it as a systemic fault of Soviet
political culture – an inevitable outcome of the Bolshevik
political project.
Parallel
to this historical and legal narrative, Solzhenitsyn follows the
typical course of a zek (a slang term for an inmate), derived from
the widely used abbreviation “z/k” for “zakliuchennyi”
(prisoner) through the Gulag, starting with arrest, show trial, and
initial internment; transport to the “archipelago”; the treatment
of prisoners and their general living conditions; slave labor gangs
and the technical prison camp system; camp rebellions and strikes
(see Kengir uprising); the practice of internal exile following the
completion of the original prison sentence; and the ultimate (but not
guaranteed) release of the prisoner. Along the way, Solzhenitsyn’s
examination details the trivial and commonplace events of an average
prisoner’s life, as well as specific and noteworthy events during
the history of the Gulag system, including revolts and uprisings.
Solzhenitsyn
also states:
Macbeth’s
self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him.
Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual
strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen
corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology – that is what
gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer
the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social
theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his
own and others’ eyes…. That was how the agents of the Inquisition
fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of
foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the
colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins
(early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of
future generations… Without evildoers there would have been no
Archipelago.
— The
Gulag Archipelago, Chapter 4, p. 173
There
had been works about the Soviet prison/camp system before, and its
existence had been known to the Western public since the 1930s.
However, never before had the general reading public been brought
face to face with the horrors of the Gulag in this way. The
controversy surrounding this text, in particular, was largely due to
the way Solzhenitsyn definitively and painstakingly laid the
theoretical, legal, and practical origins of the Gulag system at
Lenin’s feet, not Stalin’s. According to Solzhenitsyn’s
testimony, Stalin merely amplified a concentration camp system that
was already in place. This is significant, as many Western
intellectuals viewed the Soviet concentration camp system as a
“Stalinist aberration”
Where Volume 1 seemed mainly to be about the process of how the
(fictional) legalities came into being that led to arrests and about
the arrests and early detainment, this volume was all about the camps
and the various kinds of people in the Gulag. The first 65% dealt
exclusively with the camps, what went on in them, how the prisoners
existed, how they lived (and died) what uses the camps were put too.
This was grueling. I started this particular volume back in August of
last year and am just now finishing it up. So 5 months?
I wish I had profound things to write here but I don't. Solzhenitsyn
simply chronicles what has gone on and shows how some of it happened
(people turning a blind eye, people letting it happen because it was
happening to someone else, people letting it happen because they were
afraid of it happening to them, people letting it happen because it
was happening to a group they didn't like) and the absolutely
horrific costs of the camps. Make no mistake, the Gulags were death
camps as sure as the Nazi camps were.
Solzhenitsyn also lets his own personality and biases show through
quite a bit when he talks about the various kinds of people in the
last part of the book. Any time a “thief” is mentioned (ie, a
non-political offender for some actual crime), he really goes off
against them. He makes no bones about how he survived his time
(becoming an informer in the camps) and describes the very few kind
of people who would refuse that (Christians being the main group).
Besides the weighty content, what also slowed me down was the
references to things or people that I simply had no idea about or
anyway to put them into context. Many times whole passages held
almost no meaning for me because I didn't know the people being
talked about or the brand of Russian humor went winging its way over
my head. Solzhenitsyn did have a dry, sarcastic kind of humor and I
appreciated what I could understand. Whenever he talked about the
language and how particular words grew out of the Gulag, he lost me
there too.
I won't go into the politics beyond to say that what we are seeing
now in terms of our media organizations in lockstep with the current
administration will be very familiar to anyone who has read this.
I am going to be taking an extended break before attempting Volume 3.
I've got a bunch of other non-fiction books that have been just
sitting on my kindle so it's time to pay them some attention. And I
can't face another volume like this for awhile, it's just too much.
★★★★☆