Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria

Rating:
Summary: Pretentious, unscholarly and simply WRONG
Review: The author T. Todorov is a Bulgarian living in France and working as a Historian there. I first ran across his lack of professionalism in my historiography class at Harvard University. He is an 'expert', in ancient Meso-American cultures (if I remember correctly) but tries to voice opinions on all human history in every period and geographical regions. Among professional historians in the West you will not find one person who takes him seriously because he talks about things he does not know about.

This book is a perfect example. There is a cottage industry in the West among pseudoscholars, in institutes paid by powerful interests, to spit on every country which used to be socialist or member of the Warsaw pact. The more spit the better. You'll get your book published and so on. I won't even mention my research because even a resume will take 20 pages. But I will state for the record: this book is nothing more than a commercial "common sense" for every spineless, onanistic pseudoscholar in a Western university. People who have not lived in Bulgaria during socialism and who know nothing about the system might swallow the bait.

Todorov is a hack, just like so many who make their living his way.

Rating:
Summary: Gruesome and sickening
Review: This book contains the first hand accounts of many of the people involved in the work camps of Belene and Lovech. Belene is an island located on the Danube where one of the first work camps began. It still functions as a prison today. Lovech was started when 160 men went on hunger strike in Belene. Many of the prisoners were tortured and beaten to death. After death, their bodies were fed to pigs.

The horrific first hand accounts contained in this work documents not only the victims but also their families and the directors and guards at the camp (almost all of which are still deny their involvement and none of which have been brought to justice)

What is most disturbing is not so much that something similiar to the Nazi camps occured in Bulgaria but the fact that noone has had to pay for what they did. This book serves notice to the world that not only did atrocities such as this occur after WWII but that they are still occcuring in Vietnam and other places and will continue to occur as long as we allow it.

The only real deficiency in this book is that it doesn't have any accounts from any gypsies or Turks who undoubtly recieved worse treatment at the hands of the Bulgarian communist party. Also many of the accounts were right after the fall of communism. Having personally talked with some former inmates of Belene and Lovech I cannot help to think that many were still scared to speak out and that many equally horrible events remain uncovered. As one inmate put it "Even now there are very few people willing to talk about their experiences in the campss. They're still afraid! I am too. Yes I'm afraid, but my sons are now grown up and can fend for themselves. So why should I be afraid? Because the gun is still loaded in the hands of old men who won't hesitate to fire. Thus it was and still is in Bulgaria.

Rating:
Summary: If you want to be scared out of your wits...read this book!
Review: This book terrified me in its magnification of horrors and atrocities suffered by those in the Communist gulag. What evil was perpetrated on millions of innocent lives during this time. Read this book and you will never forget the gruesome images, the agonizing despair felt by the inmates of these bloody camps. Anyone who thinks that Communism and Socialism are beautiful ideologies should read the accounts of those who lived under such glorious regimes as Stalin and Hitler!

Rating:
Summary: The Forgotten Gulag
Review: Todorov's book is a great read for both students of East European history and political violence. The book is a careful compilation and editing of recently published memoirs and TV documentaries that reveal the brutality of the Communist concentration camps. The book catalogues the senseless suffering of many of the victims of Communism, not because they were dissidents, but because they knew a Western language or liked rock and roll. Todorov also gives us the views of the prison guards and party functionaries and carefully details their duplicity and self-justification. Overall, it is a powerful book that fills an important gap in our knowledge about gulags in other countries besides the ex-USSR as well as reminds us of the brutality of the Communist system.