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Summary: Seminal
Review: A must have book. Not as eloquent as Solzehnitsyn but thoroughly detailed and documented horrors of Gulag (and communism)
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Summary: well done
Review: A very good book, deserving of all the acclaim it has gained.
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Summary: A wonderful book
Review: A wonderful bookful. The ideas and thoughts are presently wonderfully, I would read this several times over.
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Summary: Illuminating one of modern history's darkest chapters
Review: Anne Applebaum has done a magnificent job of shedding light on the 20th century Soviet penal system as embraced by the vast network of Gulag camps. Thoroughly researched, this account draws fascinating and important distinctions between prisons and camps, as well as between the various types of individuals contained therein (e.g. 'politicals' versus 'criminals'), the roles each group played, and the treatment each received. The plight of female prisoners, including those pregnant and already with children, represents one of the more heart-rending threads in the book.The Gulag camps and their administration were a bewildering mixture of rules and 'norms' issued by Joseph Stalin and his sycophants back in Moscow on the one hand, and arbitrary decisions made by local camp authorities on the other. The whim of a guard often meant the difference between life and death for a camp inmate. It is difficult to grasp just how much suffering was endured by so many, but Ms. Applebaum, through her numerous anecdotes obtained from persons who survived the camps, gives the reader a very good sense of what it must have been like. Even the prison guards often had insufficient food, and nowhere decent to sleep. There were even bizarre situations in Gulag camps where prisoners were promoted as guards, and guards demoted to be prisoners. One of the most chilling messages of the book is that, for thousands of Gulag victims, it was preferable to injure or mutilate oneself (e.g. by swallowing barbed wire or glass, or by tearing off and eating one's own flesh) and thereby be unable to work, than it was to suffer the harsh conditions of mining, heavy manufacturing and logging, for which the remote northern camps were notorious. Certain huge construction projects, such as railroads and highways that led to nowhere, and an aborted tunnel (!) to Sakhalin Island near Japan, ended up as mass graves for thousands of helpless souls. Here are two brief illustrations of just how cruel and destructive the Gulag world was: 1. Camp authorities often released prisoners near death, so as to keep the camp's death count within thresholds that would allow camp authorities to keep their jobs; 2. a husband and wife finally met up in freedom, after over ten years of having lived apart in separate camps. The husband, upon seeing that his wife was in relatively good physical shape, readily concluded that she had slept with her captors in exchange for more food and|or lighter work duties. With this, he decided to have nothing more to do with his wife. Meanwhile, had the wife not done what she did, she could have easily perished; for her, her actions were a matter of survival. I highly recommend this book. Anyone interested in learning more about the paranoid machinations of Stalin will want to read both "Gulag" and "The Fall of Berlin", by Antony Beevor.
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Summary: Don't judge this book by its cover
Review: Anne Applebaum raises an excellent point at the beginning of "Gulag": Why aren't the horrors of the Soviet Union's prison system better known or acknowledged as among the worst atrocities of human history? Perhaps the answer to that question would make for a compelling sequel to this book. But admirably Applebaum keeps a very tight rein on the ideological battles that rage in Russian studies (see other reviews!) and sticks to the facts-many of which a nonspecialist would have no access to in such detail before this book. As a child who was lucky enough to encounter "The Endless Steppe" at an impressionable age, I was grateful to find such a nonpolemical and graceful introduction to this topic. This book is comprehensive and well structured, and free of the jargon and awkward writing that afflicts many histories. Applebaum also allows for some lyricism when writing about the landscapes of the Russian Far East and the doomed romances between prisoners-although she usually lets the facts and the prisoners' own words speak for themselves. Don't be put off by the grim cover and daunting heft of this book: it's a great read.
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Summary: Wretched truth of economic and political evil
Review: Applebaum chronicles with fine detail and compassion, the profoundly sad, cruel, arrogant and evil system that represented the political and economic basis for much of the Soviet Union's life, a life built on forced labor and false accusations. She starts with the origins of the camps, provides a thorough picture of elements of the camps - transportation to the camps, conditions, women and children, reward and punishment, the guards, work and survival strategies in the camps, revolts and amnesties, and more - and then concludes with the demise of the camps. From 179,000 prisoners in 1930, and peaking at 2,356,685 in 1949, the entire, miserable story makes the reader both want to put the book down out of revulsion yet also read on to the bitter end. From this morass of inhumanity arises a picture of Stalin's brutal belief in forging a 'perfect' country by enslaving people to do his will, and to do it poorly at best. The labor camps were an awful and misguided effort to develop the country's resources at a time when natural resources - timber, gold, uranium - were seen as the primary source of wealth. Sadly enough, Applebaum shows that Stalin had the world fooled. He even led us to believe that harsh terms and conditions were necessary and not unlike the efforts made to develop the American economy. Even vice president Henry Wallace, deluded by a Potemkin-village experience to the camps, said: "There is nothing irreconcilable in our aims and purposes." For those who want to see just how much the American and Russian systems differ, read this book. This is not simply a book about prisons. It is about a culture and a system, economics and politics, philosophy and practical decisions. The wretched truth is that the attempt to use slave labor to build an economy is not only immoral, it is impractical. The saddest fact is that it took sixty years to realize that the gulag system did not work, just like the rest of the country did not work. The gulag became a microcosm for the country and, when offered 'freedom', some of the camp prisoners reasoned that they were no worse off in the gulag than in trying to eke out a life in the Russian economy. Readers must realize the difficulty Applebaum had to assemble this portrait, learning Russian and accessing the archives and distant camps. This is a life's work, indicative of the millions of people who suffered at the hands of the gulag system.
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Summary: A Forgotten Past, Not Remembered
Review: As a Latvian, this topic has been an interest of mine since childhood. I grew up hearing about the mass deportations of June 1941. One of the memoirs cited, John Noble's, "I Was a Slave in Russia", 1960, I read at least 40 years ago. I used to have a copy of this book. Why is this book so important? Because while dignitaries and heads of state visit Auschwitz, no one is visiting Vorkuta, Norlisk, Kolyma and other camps. Putin probably did not tell his esteemed visitors that St. Petersburg was built with bones and rests on bones. Russia has forgotten the past. Russia is ignoring the past. Russia wants the past to go away. Why else is there no official mourning or remembrances? No one mourns for the Gulag innocents in the West. Other than the survivors, no one cares about them in Russia. The author brings this up as an example that the Russia has not learned from its past. "...if we really knew what Stalin did to the Chechens, and if we felt that it was a terrible crime against the Chechen nation, it is not only Vladimir Putnin who would be unable to sit back and watch with any equanimity" page 575. If the topic of this book were not so serious, then most of what happened sounds like the "theatre of the absurd." For example, the camp administration was "supposed" to take good care of the prisoners. For the camps were an "economic" asset to the State. However, the author points out that there was no incentive, for the most part, to make sure inmates did not die. There was an "official" written policy. Then there was what really happened. I hope I am still alive, if and when the rest of the Gulag archives are opened. I am sending this book to Latvia.
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Summary: We must remember
Review: As a lay person wishing to know more, I was drawn to this book because it spelled out some things which need to be remembered. The value of history is that we learn from it but the learning stops when people close their eyes and minds to important information. Abuse of human beings is nothing new in world history but this book opens an area not previously exposed to the general public. As I write these words I have in front of me stories of great abuse that continue today in N. Korea. Knowing more about the Gulag is but the first step toward seeing that it doesn't happen again. Applebaum has done a fine job in helping to expose such awful events.
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Summary: A fine study of a neglected subject
Review: As a professional historian (although one with no expertise in Eastern Europe), I am impressed with what I fear may be denigrated by the author's ideological opponents as a work of journalism. Applebaum has keen historical imagination, and her research has been remarkably thorough under the circumstances. (She also has a fine writing style; it's a pleasure to watch the care with which she crafts her text.) Applebaum might have made of this work nothing more than a string of horrors, a secular Foxe's Book of Martyrs. That she can communicate the terrifying nature of the Gulag and its incalculable human cost while simultaneously suggesting the larger historical issues is a testimony to her gifts as a historian.
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Summary: A superb work
Review: As someone who has spent plenty of time studying the Soviet Union, this has to be considered one of the best on the subject to come out in some time. Not only does the book include a great amount of detail, the author helps us make sense of it and puts it in perspective. Highly recommended.
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