Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Anne Applebaum first lays out the chronological history of the camps and the logic behind their creation, enlargement, and maintenance. Applebaum also examines how life was lived within this shadow country: how prisoners worked, how they ate, where they lived, how they died, how they survived.
She examines their guards and their jailers, the horrors of transportation in empty cattle cars, the strange nature of Soviet arrests and trials, the impact of World War II, the relations between different national and religious groups, and the escapes, as well as the extraordinary rebellions, that took place in the s. I am chugging along, but I'll tell you Gulag: A History is an exceptionally hard read. The topic is dark, and I am usually fine with difficult subjects, but this proves to be harder than I thought!
The book is VERY thorough. Chapter after chapter covering every possible aspect of the Gulag camps. I have read a lot previously on the topic. References are made to much of what I have read before The material presented is well organized. The author analyzes the evidence; she doesn't simply accept what is being said but compares information with other sources.
Yet there is so much information you get drowned by the details and what is discussed is so very horrible. Here is one example of the meticulous analytical manner in which facts are studied.
The food eaten in the camps is discussed, so of course food portions in grams must be listed too - for each and every prisoner type. On top of that the water content, which skews the nutrient content for the given weight, is documented.
See what I mean by thorough?! Thoroughness on top of being a very difficult subject makes this a hard read. It is a clinically accurate and an encyclopedic tome. Tons of references to particular individual experiences. This I like.
The book is well organized, well researched, thorough, meticulously documented and encyclopedic in content. Multiple references to particular individuals' experiences are sited. Statements are not taken at face value; instead each is evaluated to discover the real truth. How is the book organized? There are three sections. The first covers how the camps came into being and developed with time. The central section covers life in the camps divided into chapters focusing on different themes, i.
Here are some examples of the themes: arrest, interrogations, incarceration in prisons, transport to the camps, intermediary transit camps. Once in the camps the following themes are equally meticulously documented - freedom of movement, classification of the incarcerated, bathing, dining, food, sleeping facilities, work, propaganda, punishment and reward, communication with the outside world, spiritual issues, criminals versus political prisoners, women and children and births and nurseries and sex and rape and prostitution and love and homosexuality I simply cannot list everything!
What is essential to understand is that every aspect is meticulously documented. There are statistics and quotes from the incarcerated.
The third section is about the dismantlement of the camps and the situation at the end of the 20th century. Finally there is an epilogue that focuses on why the author felt the book needed to be written. The first and the third section are in chronological order. I found the war years and the treatment of Poles, Crimean Tartars, Ukrainians, Chechens and other Caucasians, seen from the perspective of current events, particularly interesting.
The book's organization and clear writing makes it easy to follow. It is like reading an encyclopedia section of over pages. If I were writing a research paper, this would be a fantastic resource. It is itself a bit like a research paper. I would have appreciated a bit more editing. Even if it is easy to understand, it doesn't read as a book for the general public, in that it is so comprehensive! I do think there was a real need for such a book.
How you rate a book depends on what you personally are looking for. I liked it and would definitely recommend it to others, along with a word of warning that it is at times tedious and often relates horrible events. The narration of the audiobook by Laural Merlington was absolutely excellent. I cannot judge her Russian pronunciation. I liked the speed at which it was narrated and the ease at understanding each word. Clearly narrated. This is essential in a book of non-fiction.
I am giving the narration five stars. View all 9 comments. This is a fantastic book. It is a must-read for anyone who has any illusions about communism. It sucks. It is evil. It belongs in the dustbin of history. Anne Applebaum tells the story of the gulag in fascinating detail, using newly available Soviet archives and published and unpublished memoirs from those who survived the camps. Their stories are chilling, to say the least. In the Introduction, Applebaum discusses the differences and similarities between the Nazi death camps and the Soviet camps.
She also explains why so many on the Left were willing to excuse Soviet communism and particularly Stalin for its crimes. She then delves into a general history of the camps, explaining that they were, at heart, an economic enterprise. The first official camp, Solovetsky, spread out over a group of islands in the White Sea, was meant to be profitable.
Later, Stalin insisted that the entire gulag must turn a profit, which it never did. But no one had had the guts to tell Stalin that.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Applebaum shows how many prisoners were used for grand construction projects like canals and railroads, with the predictably disappointing results and thousands of lives lost suffice to say that OSHA would not be pleased with the working conditions. She writes how the camp system expanded throughout the s until it obtained its permanent form.
By , hundreds of camps imprisoned millions of people, many of them criminals, many of them politicals, those whose only "crime" was some sort of dissent against Stalin and the Soviet Union. Many of these politicals were innocent, of course. In Part Two, in my opinion the heart and most compelling section of the book, Applebaum delves into the minutiae of the camps, chronicling prisoners' experiences through the arrest, transport, and imprisonment in the camps.
This is where you get the sense of the monstrosity of the system and the government that ran it. Space doesn't permit me to go into all the details. Suffice to say that as a horror writer, there's enough material to write dozens of short stories and novels, with no need for any supernatural element to make them scary. In the third section, she switches back to general history and covers the rest of the 20th century, from the death of Stalin to the death of the Soviet Union.
The gulag survived Stalin's death, but it did shrink as Soviet leaders were then free to address the unprofitably of the system.
Many camps were closed and many prisoners were released, though many of those were later re-arrested. But the suppression continued. Innocents were still jailed for speaking out for freedom and still forced to endure hard labor in horrific conditions. This is the story of oppression on a massive scale. But it's also a collection of gritty and inspiring stories of survival by those lucky enough to live through the experience.
Unfortunately, millions did not. View all 13 comments. A 5 star read without a doubt. This book impacted me on so many levels, I was absorbed and utterly fascinated with every word I read. My family is from Russia I am a first gen American and many of the events and situations which occurred in this book related to my family history.
It's impact was tremendous as I learned so much of what had happened and what it must have been like for my family living and eventually escaping during Stalin's reign. As a young girl I heard stories of my grandfat A 5 star read without a doubt.
As a young girl I heard stories of my grandfather having been in a "labor camp" but until I read this, I never knew what that really meant. My family knew a dissident who vacationed in the same resort we did every year, until I read this I truly did not understand what that meant either. Of course, we all can intellectually know what that means but Applebaum brings it to light on so many levels.
I feel like I had the best Russian history lesson yet was emotionally engaged the whole time. What better way to learn about history?! Anne Applebaum is truly a talented writer. It is evident how well-researched this book is and she is able to present it in such a wonderfully engaging and readable format. Speaking for myself, other than knowing that labor camps existed, I had NO idea to the extent and to the length of time they existed. I am sure I am not alone in this and this book brings so much to our understanding of the world.
I feel it is a very important contribution to history and a wonderful memorial to those who experienced these miserable situations. I feel it also brings an understanding of the Russian people both past and present. I highly recommend this book. The more we are able to understand how different societies have transformed their neighbors and fellow citizens from people into objects, the more we know of the specific circumstances which led to each episode of mass torture and mass murder, the better we will understand the darker side of our own human nature.
This book was written because it almost certainly will happen again. Totalitarian philosophies The more we are able to understand how different societies have transformed their neighbors and fellow citizens from people into objects, the more we know of the specific circumstances which led to each episode of mass torture and mass murder, the better we will understand the darker side of our own human nature.
Totalitarian philosophies have had, and will continue to have, a profound appeal to many millions of people. We need to know why—and each story, each memoir, each document in the history of the Gulag is a piece of the puzzle, a part of the explanation.
Without them, we will wake up one day and realize that we do not know who we are. Oct 13, Dawn rated it it was amazing Shelves: locale-eastern-europe , favorites , non-fiction , own , read I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the era, country, politics, WWII or even just the Gulag itself. The vastness of the Gulag is astounding. From small camps to giant and from city prisons to tents in Siberia and all sizes in between. The variety of work that was required was also quite extensive, from manufacturing to logging to mining to channel building.
With the quality of life that prisoners had to endure and how unprepared both they and their captures were I am surprised t I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the era, country, politics, WWII or even just the Gulag itself. With the quality of life that prisoners had to endure and how unprepared both they and their captures were I am surprised that so many people survived to tell their tales.
I had no issues with the history, it was extremely well researched but the layout of the book held a few issues for me. Part 1 was a great introduction but I found Part 2 was a bit confusing as it switched from years and camps with such rapidity. I couldn't always remember what had happened in that year or that camp as it switched from subject to subject.
Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs.
Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Gulag : a history of the Soviet camps Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! The Gulag was first put in place in after the Russian Revolution. In , Stalin personally decided to expand the camp system, both to use forced labor to accelerate Soviet industrialization and to exploit the natural resources of the country's barely inhabitable far northern regions.
By the end of the s, labor camps could be found in all twelve of the Soviet Union's time zones. The system continued to expand throughout the war years, reaching its height only in the early s. From until the death of Stalin in , some 18 million people passed through this massive system.
Of these 18 million, it is estimated that 4. But the Gulag was not just an economic institution. It also became, over time, a country within a country, almost a separate civilization, with its own laws, customs, literature, folklore, slang, and morality.
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