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A review by libbum
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume II by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3.0
I'm not sure what more I can say about this volume that I haven't already expressed in my review of the first volume.
It's difficult not only from the depressive and shocking nature of the content, but as well as reading it as a non-russian with only a spattering of knowledge about this era. But I do feel far more confident this time round. I follow the stories, I know the vernacular, I know the timelines & things get worse - but I'm no longer surprised.
There are definite repetitions in this volume that, word for word, you read in the first volume. I guess, at each of these junctures we get an elaboration on each topic, but it makes such a long work even longer.
The most interesting part would have to have been the exposition of the thieves law and how they came to essentially run the camps from the inside with the guards blessings. Some of the worst parts were descriptions of how a person usually dies of scurvy, or that it's more efficient to bury people alive rather than shooting them first because dead-weight is more difficult to carry than barely-living weight.
Straight on to volume 3. What an eye opener of a document.
It's difficult not only from the depressive and shocking nature of the content, but as well as reading it as a non-russian with only a spattering of knowledge about this era. But I do feel far more confident this time round. I follow the stories, I know the vernacular, I know the timelines & things get worse - but I'm no longer surprised.
There are definite repetitions in this volume that, word for word, you read in the first volume. I guess, at each of these junctures we get an elaboration on each topic, but it makes such a long work even longer.
The most interesting part would have to have been the exposition of the thieves law and how they came to essentially run the camps from the inside with the guards blessings. Some of the worst parts were descriptions of how a person usually dies of scurvy, or that it's more efficient to bury people alive rather than shooting them first because dead-weight is more difficult to carry than barely-living weight.
Straight on to volume 3. What an eye opener of a document.