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hornj 's review for:
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume I
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I am listening to the unabridged version of this book from Audible. Before I started it, I did a little poking around online to see what people are saying about it. I was a little surprised to find how many Putin/Russian apologists there are with a lot of incentive to discredit the book. Those critics to me show why this book is so important. They talk about how it is no comprehensive account of the Gulags, and how Solzhenitsyn just collected a bunch of camp gossip. But that's the entire point. He says that that is just what he was doing, because he feared (or knew) that the true story would never be told to the world with scholarship based on whatever records the Soviet state chose to be left around.
I'm only a third of the way through the entire book, but let me record a few thoughts here. This is an excellent and important book. Sections of it are very powerful, some of the most powerful I've read. One that stands out is right at the beginning - where he talks about how people were arrested right off the street and how if everyone being taken had fought back and refused to go quietly, that it's likely that the Soviet regime couldn't have gotten away with it like they did.
A lot of this should be read by everyone - it really shows a vivid portrait of a cruel and unjust system, the veneer of justice that is necessary to keep up appearances, the little compromises made by authority figures for their own convenience, that cumulatively brought incredible suffering on the prisoners. He paints a vivid picture of arrest, torture in interrogation, and prison life, one that could only come from an eyewitness, and truly many eyewitnesses.
Although I've enjoyed the book, it is one that would be far better if abridged. In between the moving and brilliant sections there are others that drag on and on - pages describing trial after trial in detail, or documenting changes to the prison system over the years. I know there are abridgments, I'm interested to compare them and see if they are worth recommending highly.
There is a bit of profanity and crude language to discuss crude topics.
I'm only a third of the way through the entire book, but let me record a few thoughts here. This is an excellent and important book. Sections of it are very powerful, some of the most powerful I've read. One that stands out is right at the beginning - where he talks about how people were arrested right off the street and how if everyone being taken had fought back and refused to go quietly, that it's likely that the Soviet regime couldn't have gotten away with it like they did.
A lot of this should be read by everyone - it really shows a vivid portrait of a cruel and unjust system, the veneer of justice that is necessary to keep up appearances, the little compromises made by authority figures for their own convenience, that cumulatively brought incredible suffering on the prisoners. He paints a vivid picture of arrest, torture in interrogation, and prison life, one that could only come from an eyewitness, and truly many eyewitnesses.
Although I've enjoyed the book, it is one that would be far better if abridged. In between the moving and brilliant sections there are others that drag on and on - pages describing trial after trial in detail, or documenting changes to the prison system over the years. I know there are abridgments, I'm interested to compare them and see if they are worth recommending highly.
There is a bit of profanity and crude language to discuss crude topics.