Review: The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. My experience was closer to 3 stars, but I think the subject is important and the experience of reading about it is useful for those who haven't spent the last few decades reading about the details elsewhere.

The author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, lived through the communist revolution that turned Russia into the USSR. He was imprisoned.

I'd like to say that he was imprisoned because he had thoughts and beliefs that didn't align with the dominant Soviet communist ideology, but the reality is that the Soviet communists used prison as a terrorist tactic. Anyone could be tossed in prison for the flimsiest of reasons (or no reason at all).

The ultimate objective of the Soviet communists was to create a populace that would never question communist rules.

My problem with the book is that the first portion of the book is filled with broad-brush descriptions of how people ended up in prison and the other tactics used by Soviet communists. There are few details. No statistics. Few names with details of their cases.

I have spent the better part of 40 years reading about how all communist states treat their people. In those 40 years, I have read more detailed descriptions of the very same circumstances.

Few people had the advantage of knowing what the Soviet communists were doing back when this book was first published. What made this book great at that time was that it revealed so much new information. These were the first experiential building blocks in an argument against communism.

Today we have the benefit of more detailed accounts and analyses. Mortar to fill the gaps between those blocks.

This is a great starting point for someone who has no exposure to the deprivations of communism.



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