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A review by harlando
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume I by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3.0
This was really long, and I will admit to skimming a page or two. I liked it and learned a lot about Soviet repression, but it does go on for a while. Do Russians write longer books than Americans, or does it just seem that way? I think Nabokov wrote Lolita in the US at roughly the same time, but it wasn't even close to the length of Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn also had to hide his notes and manuscripts, which I think would cause a bias towards brevity, but that is clearly not the case.
I was most struck by the passivity of the Soviet political prisoners. Solzhenitsyn is arrested on the battlefield. he was an artillery captain and was walking around armed. One would think that there would be at least a little resistance. Solzhenitsyn spends a lot of time on the topic and also seem at a loss to explain exactly why there was so little resistance to arrest and exile. Modern America also arrests a lot of people, and some of those people are mistreated but not summarily executed. It seems that American police experience much more resistance from criminals than the NKVD received from politicals. There also seemed to be very few escapes even though the chaos of the war years would seem to have made escape an option.
Solzhenitsyn spends less time on the resources the state devoted to repression, but that is another thing I find fascinating. Between the arms race, bribing client states in the third world, and repressing millions of soviet citizens it is remarkable that the USSR had resources left over to do anything else.
I liked the book and I am glad I soldiered through it, but I am not in a hurry to pick up volume II.
I was most struck by the passivity of the Soviet political prisoners. Solzhenitsyn is arrested on the battlefield. he was an artillery captain and was walking around armed. One would think that there would be at least a little resistance. Solzhenitsyn spends a lot of time on the topic and also seem at a loss to explain exactly why there was so little resistance to arrest and exile. Modern America also arrests a lot of people, and some of those people are mistreated but not summarily executed. It seems that American police experience much more resistance from criminals than the NKVD received from politicals. There also seemed to be very few escapes even though the chaos of the war years would seem to have made escape an option.
Solzhenitsyn spends less time on the resources the state devoted to repression, but that is another thing I find fascinating. Between the arms race, bribing client states in the third world, and repressing millions of soviet citizens it is remarkable that the USSR had resources left over to do anything else.
I liked the book and I am glad I soldiered through it, but I am not in a hurry to pick up volume II.