The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Review

Oh my god! This book describes the labor camps, trials, prisons, secret police, and special camps from the beginning to the near ends of the Soviet Union. A well-researched, history book that is simultaneously filled with such vivid and engaging stories. A takedown of the Soviet Union labor camps and philisophy. It inspired in me a great fear of government power that starts with an uncompromising vision goes through censorship, petty arrests, and limitless power, and ends with immoral human destruction. A great achievement and honor that this book was created, especially at a time when the world and even many in the Soviet Union were blind to it. No matter how horrid and miserable you imagine it is, I can guarantee it is worse. At the very very least, Hitler's camps were aimed at some (obviously horrible)hope or goal, this was just misery and death and mayhem absolutely uselessly aimed. Page after page and chapter after chapter wore me down and I often put this heavy book down for a break. Not gut-wrenching but so hopeless and brazenly not just immoral but anti-moral. In the end, the story did shine a glimmer of hope and triumph. As the grip loosens and a work like this could even be produced, it was so immensely hopeful even for me as a reader. The days of freedom before the tanks or moments of hope after so many chapters without any made this lengthy book probably convey to me some of what it was like in those camps.