Rating: 
Summary: A readable classic - let us never forget!
Review: What HAS happened to the gulags, those notorious Soviet prison camps? Did their brutal conditions and horribly abused prisoners just evaporate with the downfall of the Soviet Union? This has not been answered to my satisfaction.Solzhenitsyn, a prisoner himself at one time, puts his considerable literary skills to work in documenting, in sometimes excrutiating detail, the vastness of the Soviet prison system and its atrocities. From his earlier work ("Ivan Denisovitch") to "The First Circle" which was the first installment to this work, to the completed volumes, we are given a tour of living hell. It's interesting to note that the officer who befriended pianist Szpilman ("The Pianist) died as a POW in a Soviet prison camp in 1952--well after the war was over and long after treaties decreed that POW's should be released. Solzhenitsyn documents the evils of the system so we not only know what happened, but that, like the Holocaust, we can never forget. This was a book that demanded to be written, and despite its great length, it is surprisingly readable, though horrifying in detail and scope.
| 
