The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago is a history of the Soviet Russian system of forced labor concentration camps from 1918 to 1956. The preface by Anne Applebaum says it destroyed the prestige of the Soviet Union and the belief that its version of communism, at least, had any moral legitimacy and as such this isn't just history--it made history. It originally circulated in 1974 underground from hand to hand in unbound typed manuscripts. The subtitle is "an experiment in literary investigation." Solzhenitsyn had no "access to archival documents or government records" so, as he explains in his own introduction, the history is based on "reports, memoirs and letters by 227 witnesses"--including himself since he famously was an inmate of the Gulag system. The tone of this is no detached, sober history. It's a scathing indictment of a brutal, surreal system with flashes of the blackest of humor and sharpest of ironies. I'm not about to forget, for instance, the tale of an auditorium of people applauding Stalin for over ten exhausting minutes because they all were afraid to be the first to stop. And the man who did was arrested. It's written in a powerful, very personal voice worthy of literary fiction--absolutely absorbing and despite the length not at all the slog I thought it would be. Not that some parts were not hard to read. In the beginning because so much is horrific, even for someone like me who has read first hand accounts of the Holocaust. And later the torrent of misery became numbing--I particularly started feeling that in the midst of reading about the Soviet "show trials" of the 1930s. It might be best to give this book a rest in the middle before continuing on afresh. And mind you--this edition--and all of those I've seen for sale in bookstores, is only the first two volumes of a seven-volume work.This is a tour through islands of man-made hells and the contours of the police state by one who knew the territory intimately. In that regard, the chapters "The Arrest" and "The Interrogation" particularly stand out. Solzhenitsyn listed techniques ranging from sleep deprivation, stress positions, beatings and starvation to practices so barbaric, I flinch away at repeating them here. The Soviets could have taught the Gestapo a thing or two on torture. Solzhenitsyn recounts reading about a woman who was interrogated in a Nazi Camp and survived without giving away any information. Many, he said, would consider her a "model of a heroine." But Solzhenitsyn observes that "for a reader with a bitter Gulag past it's a model of inefficient interrogation" since she didn't "die under torture" nor was "driven insane." But above all what I think I will take away from this book is expressed in this quote: He says that "the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts."
بعض البشر ليسوا بشراً............................................من إصدارات دار علاء الدين كتاب أرخبيل غولاغ للروسى الحائز على نوبل ألكسندر سولجنيتسينترجمة نجم سلمان الحجار..............................................................اسم الكتاب الغريب من كلمتين أرخبيل وهى المساحات الارضية الواسعة المتقاربة وغولاغ اطلق على معسكرات الاعتقال التى كانت تتم فيها عمليات التعذيب ......................................................................الكتاب مكون من ثمانية فصول وهو عبارة عن دراسة تحليلية لتلك الفترة التى تلت قيام الثورة البلشفية وتولى لينين مقاليد الحكم وخلفه ستالين قام الكاتب برصد تلك التجاوزات غير القانونية التى حدثت والاعتقالات التى كانت تتم بدون أى تهم والتى يقال ان ضحايا تلك الفترة لم تقل بأى حال من الأحوال عن خمسة ملايين ضحية والمجاعات التى حدثت والتردى الاقتصادى الذى ضرب فى اركان الإتحاد السوفيتى....................................................الكتاب الذى يقول صاحبه أنه نسخة ملطفة من الواقع القاسى لتلك الفترة قام بتجميع طرق التعذيب المتبعة والتهم التى توجه واثبات كل من تحصل عليه سواء فى محاضر او كتب سابقة سواء حالات إعدام او اعتقالات او تعذيب او أحكام بالسجن ................................................................................الكتاب هو نسخة واقعية واحصائيات حقيقية لكل ماورد فى رواية 1984 لجورج أورويل وفى النهاية أقتبس :" الأغنام الوديعة تذهب إلى فك الذئب بطوعها " .
What do You think about The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (2002)?
I can't help but look at the way that people were so confident in the system that even when they were dragged out in the middle of the night they still believed that they would just explain themselves and it would all be OK.Needless to say, by the time they realised that justice had nothing to do with it it was too late...It makes you think when you see people today, so quick to judge those called enemy of the state without any real thought as to what it is they are supposed to have done....
—Fiachna
اعترف بأنني لم أكمله و مع هذا أعطيه اربع نجوم و فيما لو كنت مهتمة بالموضوع فاعتقد انني كنت سأمسحه خمس نجوم وصلت لمنتصف الكتاب بملل تام لان الموضوع و حكايات المعتقلين لا تهمني اضافة الى اننا كعراقيين نعرف الكثير من هَذِهِ القصص التي تبدو صادمة للبعض بينما هي لكثرة تكرارها عندنا صارت شبه اعتيادية ، لا أوافق المقدم الذي تسائل عن الغرض من كُتب كهذهِ ، هذا كتاب للتاريخ و للأجيال القادمة لمعرفة مخاطر الحكم الشمولي و مضاره و كيف ان رغبتك بالإصلاح قد تجعل منك في اخر الامر سبباً في انتاج ظلم أسوء من ما قبله.
—رغد عبد الزهرة
Gulag Archipelago is not a book I think you can really read for pleasure. It's heavy, heavy stuff, and it is -- to the best of anyone's ability -- non-fiction. It contains a lot of stark truths about Russia -- Stalin's Russia, and after -- and the conditions in the camps. We know plenty about the camps in Germany, and yet even now, decades after this book was published, I knew little about this.I could as easily shelve it as 'horror' as I could 'non-fiction' or 'history'.Despite that, it's not unrelenting. There's hope -- the very fact that I read this says there's hope: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's been heard. And there's a kind of dark humour, on nearly every page, in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's analysis of events and of people.Definitely worth reading, if you can brace yourself for it. I read an abridged translation, but the author worked with the translator/abridger on it, as far as I can gather, so it could be more cohesive and easier to read than the original volumes. Even just dipping in and out of it, a chapter here and there, is better than not reading it at all.
—Nikki
