Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive and enlightening
Review: The average person does not know about the Russian Gulags and the millions it killed. As Applebaum points out, it is a forgotten holocaust that continued many years after the Nazis.
Applebaum give a comprehensive outline of the dynamic Russian political landscape and how it affected the Gulags and then peppers it with eye witness accounts of prisoners who were being directly affected by the governments policy at the time.
This really is an eye opener. Nazi genocide seemed so much simpler compared to the reasons Stalinist Communism could send you to a Gulag for. I couldnt help but think of Orwells big brother, double speak and the thought police when reading Appelbaums book.
The significance of history is only through what is remembered. There definitely needs to be more written about this important piece of history.
Rating: 
Summary: This history must not be forgotten or rewritten
Review: The real contemporary significance of this work must not be overlooked. It is less than twenty years ago that intellectuals and college professors in the U.S. and elsewhere, sometimes unknowingly using source materials now traceable to KGB funding, were denying or minimizing the Gulags and the other evils of Leninism/Stalinism. Some have seen the error of their ways, e.g., the French leftists who assembled the Black Book of Communism, in which they tabulate Communist regimes' responsibility for the deaths of at least 85 to 100 million of their own citizens. But then there are others. In the April 22, 2003 issue of The Nation, George McGovern made a passing reference to Communism as a "great hobgoblin", i.e., something harmless that's used to unnecessarily scare people.Applebaum's book, using even more newly uncovered documentation, shows that there was plenty to be scared of.
Rating:
Summary: Russia's Big Secret
Review: The Russian gulags make the German Holocaust look almost like a tea party. Russians from all walks of life were arrested at random on bogus charges to be cattled into the gulag system which in turn provided millions of men, women and children for slave labor. The Russian economy took into account how many prisoners there were available. If there was a shortage, more were merely arrested. There were more "reasons" for arresting someone than for not arresting them. This provided the logic behind the whole system. For example, a group of brothers were arrested for winning a soccer match because they defeated the favorite team of the NKVD (a.k.a. KGB) leader. Prisoners were tortured (for false confessions), beaten, starved, frozen, raped, mutilated, traded, and deprived of humanity. Being killed or dying was the least of one's problems. This truly is one of Russia's biggest historical secrets.
Rating:
Summary: A well-deserved Pulitzer Prize.
Review: The stories of camp survivors that Gulag presents bits and pieces of will stay in my memory for a very long time. This should tell you something of the impact of those stories.
But it is not just the bits and pieces of the memoirs of survivors that make this one a truly worthwhile read. That's just the icing on the cake. What sets Gulag apart is that it is such a well-balanced presentation of everything that had and still has to do with the Gulag prison system. Yes, present sense -- in North Korea the Gulags are still very much in use.
Anne Applebaum will take you from the very beginning of the Gulag to the present. Explain the origins of the Gulag, how people ended up there, and what happened to them if they were lucky enough to get out. Many found out that being released wasn't all that it should be. Often it meant being banned from the major cities and shunned by the citizens who feared associating with a former political prisoner, sometimes this included being shunned by your own children. She will tell you the difference between a political and a criminal prisoner. Show how men and women had quite different ways of dealing with the reality of the Gulag. Tell of harrowing facts concerning children born in the Gulag, but also of hope derived from planning an escape. She will tell you about the guards, who sometimes feared the prisoners more then the prisoners feared them, and the politics that allowed the Gulag to exist. And she'll tell you much and much more. And her writing is such that you are drawn along, page after page.
I found it virtually impossible at times to put the book aside, staying up till deep into the night reading. So, it doesn't surprise me that Gulag won the Pulitzer Prize. It is well deserved. And all I can say is that if you pass up on this one, the loss will be on you.
Rating:
Summary: Plodding read at times, but superbly insightful
Review: This book in particular and this genre in general makes for fascinating and insightful reading for the (arguable) reason that the cumulative actions of Stalin's Russia, from the Gulags to World War II to the dawn of the Cold War, did more to shape world events than any other leader of the 20th century. The Gulag system was frightening in its sophisticated operation and scale. It illustrates the complete lack of logic, reason, and compassion that human beings are capable of.
The book is expertly researched and sweeping in its coverage. The downside to reading it is that rather then being presented as a straight chronological history, some of the chapters are presented by topic instead. While it generally moves forward, where the chapters jump back and reevaluate a given period from a different perspective, the effect on the reader is rather plodding.
Rating:
Summary: Towards a Mature History of the Gulag
Review: This book is a excellent and surprisingly balanced history of the Soviet prison system. Applebaum readily admits that it is an incomplete first attempt at the full story, but she has gone beyond the horror show and has seriously considered why and how the Gulag system came to be. "Gulag" offers no apologies for communist rule -- it begins by calling the prisons concentration camps and wonders why the Nazis are commonly seen as a greater historical evil than the Soviets -- but the damning tone of the introduction moderates when the details of the camps are discussed. When passing on the grislier stories from survivors' memoirs, Applebaum often notes that these were generally extreme situations and that many writers' concentration on the politicals does not represent the general prison population, the majority of which was composed of the common criminal element that would be imprisoned in every modern society. The camps themselves were not designed to torture and kill (although they did), but rather to be profitable (they never were). Camp death figures are usefully compared to contemporary death rates in the greater Soviet population, which by modern standards were astonishingly high. It is also made clear that reliable figures and non-anecdotal sources are still rare and much remains unknown about the administration of the camps. This constant historical context and intellectual honesty makes Gulag an excellent first history of the Soviet labor camps. Gulag obviously, and appropriately, lacks the overwhelming literary flair of Solzhenitzyn's "Ivan Denisovich" and "Gulag Archipelago". Applebaum has the adequate writing style of a journalist, which doesn't covey the grandeur often found in the best historical writing. For the most part the tone is very matter-of-fact, filled with both anecdotes as well as statistics, with the exceptions being the damning first and final chapters.
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Summary: Great and well researched account of a tragic era!
Review: This book is a must for readers that like a no-non sense approach to history.Ms Applebaum tells the story of the russian Gulags with integrity and without masquerading the truth.She presents what happens in those Gulags without being to cruel in details.Her book give us a fantastic voyage thru the labor camps in a way that you feel inside the camp. She doesnt leave any stone unturned.You can read about the prisoners,the guards and people in positions of authority.You read what was the sentiment and feelings of those who were captured and sent to these camps.I especially enjoyed the last three chapters which talks about the reaction of the prsioners when they were released and how the russian society received those former prisioners...Kudos to Ms Applebaum for a phenomenal work
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Summary: Evil does exist
Review: This book underscores the evil that was and still is Communism. In a profound way it also celebrates the human freedom allowed by free-enterprise and capitalism. Communist states rely so much on forcd labor that they ultimately doom themselves to economic stagnation and finally the collapse of their government. The Gulag system forced production for the state by isolating many of the best and the brightest, the very people who spurred success in the West, in forced labor camps. This book demonstrates the Hitler's evil was not the only abhorrent system of government in Europe and the introduction shows that Western commplicity is why Communism is still, to this day, not roundly reviled. An excellent book
Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Book
Review: This is a very good book that's right up there with Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago." It's not exciting to read (very few histories are), but the information contained in it is vital to our understanding of the Soviet Union's past, and Russia's present and future. This is vital to ensure that in the future, this type of thing doesn't happen again.
Rating:
Summary: The NEW STANDARD
Review: Thsi work details all aspects of camp life. It speaks of the many projects understaken, like the White Sea Canal. it speaks of the many peoples that were deported into the camps. It shows how they exists for all manners of prisoners and how diverse the structure. The author examines the guards and the resistance. She examines the foriegners(Americans, Spanish was veterans, poles, spies, germans and many others) who came to live in the cmaps and their relations with the russians. This is an amazing book, but has a lack of maps and statistical data.
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