Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum (PDF)

Description

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • This magisterial and acclaimed history offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.“A tragic testimony to how evil ideologically inspired dictatorships can be.” –The New York TimesThe Gulag—a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners—was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. Applebaum intimately re-creates what life was like in the camps and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. Immediately recognized as a landmark and long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history of the twentieth century.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Have added Gulag, to my collection of history books before it is banned.

⭐Equality. Brotherhood. Soviet slave labor. For profit? Downfall. These are the words that describe the progression from liberal idealism to the imprisonment and deportation of over 28 million Soviet citizens and foreigners to what were called the Gulags, labor camps spread out across much of the now defunct Soviet Union that held those deemed “criminals” and “politicals.” Not until 1962 when Aleksandr’s Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published did the rest of the world recognize that the Soviet vision of a worker’s paradise was nothing more than barbed wire and bondage.Such overwhelming numbers should make anyone pause for a moment and question why people were willing to tolerate such abuse. While there may not be an easy answer to this question, author Anne Applebaum poses an even more daring question: Why has the world paid so little attention to a system of oppression that destroyed the lives of millions of people? In her introduction, for example, Applebaum makes a compelling argument when she describes American and West European tourists purchasing t-shirts and memorabilia from the Stalinist Soviet era. Would those same tourists in their right mind be caught wearing a Nazi armband or a t-shirt with Hitler’s image on it? We know that Hitler and the Nazis stood for racial superiority and Social Darwinism, but are the Communist crimes against humanity less tragic because their stated goal of a classless society was somehow nobler?This question Applebaum poses is worth the price and time a reader will spend examining the history, the life, and the downfall of the Gulag in the former Soviet Union. In Part One: The Origins of the Gulag, 1917-1939 Applebaum briefly contrasts prison camps under the Czars to that of the Bolsheviks, where Lenin deemed those who were “class enemies” were to be sent to the camps initially to live in separate quarters from the criminals. There is the Great Turning Point of 1929 when Maxim Gorky, an author initially critical of Bolshevik power, visited and then wrote a glowing review of Solovetsky prison, even though the event was clearly staged. This was also the year that Joseph Stalin took a personal interest in the Gulag so that he could generate profits for the country’s industrialization plan. His inane love affair with constructing the White Sea Canal using Gulag laborers would lead to the deaths of over 25,000 prisoners, a pyric victory considering that it was built so poorly that no ships have sailed on it since its completion. When I read that Stalin was using slavery as a means of generating wealth, the world should have recognized that Communism was not that different from Fascism.What starts out as a macro analysis of a bygone prison system quickly becomes personal in Part Two: Life and Work in the Camps. There are many interesting chapters in this section, but two that stand out are the chapters on arrests and the prisoners. The decision to arrest people can at best be described as “nonsensical” and at its worst deliberate. Those who were deemed kulaks or “prosperous” peasants, those who somehow had contact with foreigners or were labeled foreigners, and those pegged as “socially dangerous elements” found themselves quickly arrested and either deported, shot, or sentenced to a prison camp, whose severity depended on their actions against the state. Of particular interest is the culture of the Gulag in terms of those deemed criminals or politicals. Those who were considered politically subversive were reviled more than criminals who had committed heinous crimes such as rape and murder.Finally, there is the apex and rapid downfall of the Gulag, where Applebaum provides more statistics on life inside during World War II. In 1941, for example, over 352,000 prisoners died, and by the end of the war more than two million would perish. Near the end and right after the war, she also lists the thousands of foreign nationals and Soviet minorities who were deported or were arrested. Of particular interest are the thousands of ethnic Muslims such as Chechens and Tartars who were forced from their lands and were not allowed to return. Applebaum does not explicitly state this, but one can surmise that much of the terrorism we encounter today can be traced back to the decisions of Joseph Stalin. Surprisingly, in 1953, right after Stalin’s death, there were close to 2.5 million prisoners in a Gulag, the highest at any point. While the Gulag officially ended after Stalin’s death, there were still political dissidents in prison camps well into the 1980s under Gorbachev.What is particularly incredible about Applebaum’s book is her ability to capture the sentiments of former Soviet citizens during and after the era of the Gulag. In her travels in the former Soviet Union, Applebaum describes people’s mostly distained reactions when they discovered her interest in the Gulag. Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent and current president of Russia, reflects this unwillingness to own up to the past other than to mention that he sees no reason to dwell upon it. Right after World War II, West Germans underwent “de-Nazification” so that they could regain their humanity. Based on Applebaum’s book, shouldn’t the world expect the same from Russians? Last time I checked, actions speak louder than even the right words.

⭐This is not an easy book to read, and I’m sure it was much harder to write in such a way that the reader would read it. It is also not a mere listing of the number who died or concise descriptions of the tortures employed for whatever purpose, although those matters are discussed if you are so interested.It is an overview of the ‘staat in staat’ of the Gulag; once you ‘entered’ the organization, Soviet public law (such as it was) became irrelevant. You were no longer a Soviet citizen; you were a denizen of the Gulag. And under Stalin, your arrest was a purely arbitrary matter; you might have as easily been hit by lightning, and for the same ‘reason’.But before a reader gets to the exploration of the subject, the author makes the introduction interesting on its own; Ms. Applebaum examines the asymmetry of Western response to Hitler, a universally despised mass murderer, compared to Stalin, who, by direct order, starved more Ukrainians to death than the number of Jews Hitler managed to kill in his ‘industrialized’ murder machines. Even now, people in the EU and the US who would never hint of a defense of Hitler will dismiss Stalin’s crimes as trivial, and often claim his show trials as, well, maybe justified. Those need to read Judt in “Post War”, (certainly no ‘capitalist tool’), who, examining all of the evidence, has to admit that ‘central planning leads to centralized murder’. But there remain in the West those who still, in spite of all evidence continue to hope otherwise.Specifically, she mentions Heidegger, whose early flirtation with the Nazis ruined his reputation, while Sarte was given a pass for taking an ‘omelets and broken eggs’ position, as was Camus, not to mention that pathetic excuse for a journalist William Durante, who originated that despicable phrase.She excuses that asymmetry in a way which seems far too kind; simply assuming the Western left was forgivably stupid. We continue to live with that stupidity, and I do not see it as forgivable; “Useful idiots” seems more than appropriate here.Regardless, we are led through the Gulag from arrest to, sometimes, release. Yes, many were released, quite a few near death to die shortly after to avoid another death stat on the camp’s record. And then quite often those released were released at the camp entrance with no resources to return to their homes, nor ‘clean’ papers. Some few who were released were given official ‘forgiveness’ and, if they could find their way ‘home’, might return to a normal life. Suffice to say, the system is revealed as it was: Slave labor, under horrible conditions, and with scant chance of return to normality.Not surprisingly, it seems the cruelty was (largely) not directed from Moscow, but was simply a product of the same dystopian Soviet system which produced thousands of shoes, all of the same size; there was no incentive for the workers to do other than the least they could. Ms. Applebaum quotes Solzhenitsyn pointing out that the zeks went thirsty not by design, but because the guards would have to fetch the water and carry it back to the zeks; they’d rather take the time for a smoke. Indeed, the banality of evil.There is far more in the detailed examination of the cultures within the camps (and prisons) zeks, trustys, guards, administrators, and finally an accounting of the delayed release of the political prisoners; it is all worth reading as it clearly defines the Soviet leadership’s dismissal of the matter; the Gulag was part and parcel of the evil of communism.For those still trying to put lipstick on the commie pig, I’m sure you’ll find details to dispute. For the rest of us, it is far beyond worthy of reading.

⭐A history of the Gulags since their beginning to modern times. Still in use, everyone should know of these.

⭐My daughter came home from school one day and told me she hated history, to which I replied that history is the best story ever told. History is about human beings and the people they loved and hated; it’s about greed, idealism, the perversion of dreams by power hungry leaders and apathetic masses; it’s death, life, goodness, murder, improbable triumphs and jaw dropping defeats. I told her about Yalta and the selling out of the eastern bloc countries by the west. We watched Shoah together, all nine hours of it. We discussed apartheid and colonialism. And she couldn’t get enough. She loved it. Because history isn’t a dry set of dates and facts and quotations; it’s our story, told over thousands of years, crossing every continent on earth.The story of the gulags needs to be told. But not like this, not from a distance. Academics may enjoy the dry recitation of events and conditions, but the majority want to experience it on a deeper level. I never felt the humanity, because there wasn’t a single fleshed out human being in this book. History isn’t just what happened, it’s who did it and why and to whom and what it was truly like then. Who these people were.It isn’t that we need to be entertained, it’s that we need to care. And history contains all the elements that draw us in, touch us deep inside. I wish academics could understand this and color their narrative with the excitement and passion and devastation that truly does exist in every historical event.

⭐I’m about a third of the way through this book, and I’m not sure I’ll finish it. I’d say that if you were doing a thesis or a dissertation on the Gulag, this is definitely the book for you, as it’s extremely scholarly and well researched.But if you’re someone who wants to understand just how horrible the Gulag was, this definitely ISN’T a good book: it’s 90% facts and figures, presented in a way that’s too cold and detached (in my opinion) for its subject matter. Instead, read Solzhenitsyn’s great work (though it’s a struggle at times), or Evgenia Ginsburg’s ‘Into The Whirlwind’ and ‘Within The Whirlwind’, Janusz Bardach’s ‘Man Is Wolf To Man’, or Alexander Dolgun’s book, ‘Dolgun’. Any one of them will help you appreciate the nightmare the Gulag was far better than Applebaum’s book.

⭐One of the most unnerving aspects of this extensively referenced work is the passing references to the early stages of Putin’s Russia and it becomes even more disturbing whilst reading it to contemplate that Putin harbours a nostalgia and a sentimentality to roll back to a type of Russia that produced the Gulags. This is a hugely impressive work that draws on a huge amount of references and archives including but over and above the obvious such as Solzhenitsyn and Shamalov to paint a wide ranging and harrowing picture of the Soviet penal camps which predated and survived Stalin’s rein but thrived at their height during his tyranny. Her access to Soviet archives is as impressive as the latent denial and collective amnesia that she portrays as still existing within the Russian people who either alternatively suffered under the gulag system, turned a blind eye to it for their own preservation or profited from it. Of course the legacy of the Gulags is still evident in the vast mineral/oil industry of Siberia. An industry which thrives under the patronage of a benovelent Putin whose personal wealth and popularity is undoubtedly funded by it’s continuing operation, in spite of an atrocious continuing environmental record merely perpetuating the legacy of 80 years of unspeakable costs in terms of human lives and misery.

⭐It is in very small print. 43 lines per page is hard-going for my 69-year old eyes. Maybe the product description for books should mention the print-size.

⭐This is a side of history I knew little about! Iam 30 years old & English & was always taught Hitler was the big bad wolf (which he is) but what Stalin did was equally as bad & the terror went on long after WW2! This book is one of those which must be read so we don’t forget & let history repeat! Shocking, gruesome, scary & terribly sad it’s not an easy read but is incredibly well written!

⭐The West is hardly interested, people with knowledge have been mostly eliminated, so there is nobody to tell these horrific stories. Anne, thank you for your research!

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