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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Shocking History
This book makes me want to never complain about anything ever again.
The Gulag Archipelago details the suffering faced by countless millions in the U.S.S.R.'s prison and labor camp system. ... Read More
Rating: - Time's Top Non-Fiction Book of the 20th Century
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, ... Read More
Rating: - Encyclopedic in Scope. Please Click on Links Below to My Unabridged-Version Reviews
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 ... Read More
Rating: - A soul-shaking earthquake of a book...
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 ... Read More
Rating: - The single greatest literary work of the twentieth century.
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 ... Read More
- Shocking History