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The Gulag Archipelago is one of those pieces I wish everyone would read. These days the lessons of socialism and communism are lost on a younger generation that

• poweronselftest 6y ago
  I read a big chunk of the Gulag Archipelago in Russian last year and it was, to my surprise, one of the most beautiful things I'd ever read. It reads like poetry, especially the beginning. Now I am thinking: maybe he recited and memorized all those passages to himself and used the verse-like structure to aid memorization. In the Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn cites something that has really stuck with me: > Martin Latsis, writing for the newspaper Red Terror, November 1, 1918: “We are not fighting against single individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. It is not necessary during the interrogation to look for evidence proving that the accused opposed the Soviets by word or action. The first question you should ask him is what class does he belong to, what is his origin, his education and his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. Such is the sense and essence of red terror.” A haunting quote, you would think. The thing is, I'm not sure that our younger generation would learn much from reading Solzhenitsyn, or even the above quote. I think even Solzhenitsyn can't teach you that you cannot take things like "equality" at face value. That maybe there are deeper realities lurking beneath the surface? I'll leave it to Dylan: > A self-ordained professor's tongue / Too serious to fool/ Spouted out that liberty / Is just equality in school / "Equality," I spoke their word / As if a wedding vow / Ah, but I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now.
  • bennysonething 6y ago
    The whole woke my movement is this type of thinking all over again. What you are, where you are from, what group you identify with gives your argument weight. Not your actual thoughts. The scary thing is I'm experiencing this being accepted as normal in the work place. To challenge this type of thinking is to become a heretic. Or worse a racist. I keep my views to myself.
    • obscoth 6y ago
      I don’t see the problem here. Do we want bigots to feel free to spew their hatred unopposed?
      • yew 6y ago
        There's a reason fascists keep showing up in the comments. Not that the moderation is likely to do anything about it.
      • bennysonething 6y ago
        I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not a racist. Far from it. I don't think race should come into anything. However it seems we're trying to make identity and race part of everything. That someone's opinion should count more or less because of their identity. This isn't a good idea.
        • obscoth 6y ago
          That’s nice. Maybe in 500 years we can forget about race. Right now there are lots of people who are actively, intentionally racist, and as long as they are around, making race taboo just means you give cover to such people.
      • poweronselftest 6y ago
        I think the question is whether these people are actually bigots.
• bjt2n3904 6y ago
  Solzhenitsyn's name has come up several times in various things I've read this month. I don't think it's a coincidence. I purchased his book off Amazon a few weeks ago, thinking it wouldn't be long until they started delisting books. Now all this nonsense with Dr. Seuss. One quote, loosely paraphrased from another book I'm struggling to finish -- an interview with survivors of post WW2 totalitarianism. One of them was incredibly disillusioned, and told the author not to bother with the interview, as no one would be ready to believe it was happening until it was too late. Edit: I am speaking very loosely here. Yes, I know the government isn't censoring Dr. Seuss. Yes, I know the estate has the right to cease publishing for any reason. Yes, I know Amazon did not delist Dr. Seuss, it was eBay. But I was not referring to any of these things, and I did not intend to. My statement was intended to be this: I expect Amazon to delist books, and am purchasing physical copies. What is happening now with Dr. Seuss is in the category of things that drove my worried purchases. Rarely will I say this, as I value being precise with what I'm saying. If your response is, "But @bjt2n3904, the government isn't censoring this" you are both technically correct, and missing the forest for the trees.
  • UncleOxidant 6y ago
    > I purchased his book off Amazon a few weeks ago, thinking it wouldn't be long until they started delisting books. Now all this nonsense with Dr. Seuss. Except it was the copyright holder of the Dr. Seuss books that decided to withdraw these books. Not the government or sellers like Amazon. It's more of an argument for reducing the length of copyright in the US rather than some sort of ominous supression of free speech.
    • ttt0 6y ago
      The copyright holder didn't delist the books, eBay did. From wsj: > Online marketplace eBay Inc. said it is working to prevent the resale of six Dr. Seuss books that were pulled earlier this week by the company in charge of the late author’s works because they contain offensive imagery.
      • Ma8ee 6y ago
• camdenlock 6y ago
  The downvotes you’re receiving would seem to confirm your hypothesis. :)
• mushbino 6y ago
  You're commenting as if Capitalism and Imperialism are squeaky clean, which is incredibly far from the truth. Just to give a little more context, Solzhenitsyn was a Fascist who supported the Germans during WWII and openly supported Franco in Spain. He was also a notorious anti-semite even at a time when anti-semitism was punishable by death in Soviet Russia. I've read Gulag Archipelago and he's a pretty good writer, but it should not be considered a work of non-fiction. A quote from an interview with his wife: "Natalya Reshetovskaya, a Russian chemist who twice married the dissident writer Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, and questioned the famous account he gave of Stalin's prison camps in ''The Gulag Archipelago,'' died in Moscow on May 28. She was 84. In her 1974 memoir, ''Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'' (Bobbs-Merrill), she wrote that she was ''perplexed'' that the West had accepted ''The Gulag Archipelago'' as ''the solemn, ultimate truth,'' saying its significance had been ''overestimated and wrongly appraised.'' Pointing out that the book's subtitle is ''An Experiment in Literary Investigation,'' she said that her husband did not regard the work as ''historical research, or scientific research.'' She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ''camp folklore,'' containing ''raw material'' which her husband was planning to use in his future productions. He began a series of love affairs with younger women and when Miss Reshetovskaya protested, she wrote that he replied: ''I have to describe lots of women in my novels. You don't expect me to find my heroines at the dinner table, do you ?'' He eventually left her for Natalya Svetlova, a young mathematician. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovskaya-84-is-dead-solzhenitsyn-s-wife-questioned-gulag.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovska... He has a "on Russians and the jews" bit on his wiki. Ridiculous anti-semite the west used as a poster boy for the horrors of the gulag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_Russia_and_the_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_Russ... What is a gulag? It's a penal colony or a labor camp or a prison. The US today houses more prisoners for slave labor as a percentage of it's population than the Soviet Union at the height of the gulag period, modern day Russia, Iran or China.
  • poweronselftest 6y ago
    > What is a gulag? It's a penal colony or a labor camp or a prison. If only. Never thought I would see gulag apologism, but I am not surprised. I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Shalamov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Shalamov was a facist anti-semite, too. PS. Nice touch with the whattaboutism. PSS. As a Jew I just love when antisemitism is invoked in character assassinations. Makes me feel loved, valued and most all: protected! ;)
• shimonabi 6y ago
  There are different kinds of socialism, like there are different kinds of capitalism. The author lived in the most extreme one and his writings show that. I can tell you that from my personal experience that the time after the fall of communism and before the agents of capitalism gained power in society was the most free time in my life.
  • bordercases 6y ago
    An anarchist, then?
  • zpeti 6y ago
    So, the only way this could possibly be true, as someone who has lived through the fall of communism, is if you are an oligarch or in an oligarch family who had first access to the resources of the state and got rich by getting ownership rights to it. Oh, sorry, the other alternative is that you were part of the mafia that took over control of a lot of where the police couldn't.
    • shimonabi 6y ago
      Not all post-communist countries had rapid privatizations. I was born in a lower class workers family in Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia.
• WaxProlix 6y ago
  It's an interesting book and (I think) well written, but we should take care not to take it as factual. Gulags were real and very awful places, but Solzhenitsyn wasn't writing a history or a scientifically investigated piece. He was writing material for future novels, and much of the book is fabrication. His wife's autobiography (and other places) confirm what's a fairly widespread view outside of the OECD world. She called western responses to it "overestimated and wrongly appraised", and mentions that Solzhenitsyn himself never viewed the book as "historical research, or scientific research, but [rather more] a 'camp folklore' collection". Solzhenitsyn wrote a lot and TGA seems like a melting pot of his own anticommunist beliefs, his experiences under Soviet rule, and an interest in his craft as a writer. But it's not 100% a historically accurate book. Obviously (shouldn't have to say it but who knows these days) gulags were bad and I wouldn't want to be placed into one etc. I do however think we do ourselves a disservice when taking untrue accounts as factual, as is the case in a lot of western treatment of Soviet leaders (esp. Stalin; Lenin seems to get more of a pass).
  • TimTheTinker 6y ago
    Your comment reads like propaganda, trying to hand-wave away one of the greatest works of journalism in the 20th century. Of course it reads like a novel and not an exposé - he had to memorize a huge portion of it. But it's an accurate indictment nonetheless.
    • WaxProlix 6y ago
      I think that you seeing this work of fiction as one of the greatest works of journalism of the 20th century is exactly why I posted. I agree that the gulag system sucks? So don't think I'm in favor of the USSR or something, because I'm not. But the book's content isn't real, it's largely fabrication, and you can say something like "I think he speaks to the truth of the situation despite not accurately representing facts and statistics" if you want to. But I don't think it's right to act like The Gulag Archipelago is anything but a novel, albeit one that maybe expounds truths beyond its content, especially in an arena like this which claims to value factuality. I also think you missed the part where the author acknowledges that it's a work of fiction and informed by real experiences but not meant to relate to reality per se. So while I value your input (of course!) I can't help but wonder if a re-read of previous comments might be in order.
• obscoth 6y ago
  Uh huh. Now say something about “antifa” so I can laugh harder.
  • VMG 6y ago
    Here is a funny one: antifa means "anti-fascism"
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • obscoth 6y ago
      Yup and they totally exist and are in no way a fever dream of special forces cosplayers.
• KirillPanov 6y ago
  Solzhenitsyn’s In The First Circle is also important for people in the tech industry to read. The book takes place in a Sharashka, a prison-within-the-prison-system for talented engineers who get (marginally) better food and conditions in exchange for doing the State's bidding. The sad part is that they end up rather excitedly reinforcing the very regime that put them there and, towards the end, are instrumental in thwarting one of their country's best hopes at throwing off the yoke of Stalinism. If you do read it, make sure you get the uncensored version. The chapter making fun of Stalin's working habits is hilarious.
  • ryanfreeborn 6y ago
    And if anyone decides to read this, please make sure you read In The First Circle, not The First Circle. The latter is the "first" publication, which Solzhenitsyn abridged and modified, because he did not think that the true work would make it past the Soviet minders. In The First Circle is the true work, as Solzhenitsyn intended.