The Gulag Archipelago

My posts lately have taken a lighter tone, but this one is most certainly not of that mold. This is a topic that should disturb you.

I just finished reading The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lately. The Gulags were a series of prisons in the former Soviet Union which were used for “enemies of the state”. Solzhenitsyn (pronounced, I’m told, Sol-JA-hen-eet-sin) likens these camps to an archipelago, a series of islands in the ocean. People were routinely arrested for the slightest reason, or for no reason at all, only to fill a quota of arrests. They were then tortured into confessing, or murdered, or were sent to work camps where they worked until they died.

This is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. I don’t say that lightly either. I’ve read Iris Chang’s book about the atrocities committed by Japanese Soldiers in Nanking, China that shocked Nazi government officials who were there (The Rape of Nanking). I’ve read of the Nazis and their concentration camps and their Ultimate Solution. This story of millions of people imprisoned, tortured and murdered by their own government, of people pulled from their homes in the middle of the night never to be seen by their loved ones again, of people living in constant fear that they may be next is the worst story I’ve ever encountered.

While many of the people imprisoned in the gulags were criminals, most were “political” criminals. Their crimes? There were stories of World War II pilots who were shot down and spent the remainder of the war in other nations, where they were exposed to foreign culture. These people were considered dangerous and needed to be re-educated. People (including the author) were arrested for being friends with someone who was arrested (who may, in fact, have also been arrested for that reason). Since the work camps needed people to perform the manual labor there were quotas to be met. No one cared if the person in the camp was actually guilty of anything or merely got in the way of an arresting officer with a quota.

We’ll probably never know just how many people died in the Gulags, estimates run in the tens of millions. Some were murdered outright, some were worked to death.

I’ll offer a glimpse of the Gulags. Prisoners were set to work to build a canal, using picks, shovels and wheelbarrows, no heavy machinery. In winter. People would freeze to death during the work day, sledges had to be sent around at night to pick up the corpses. Two hundred and fifty thousand prisoners died during this construction project. You read that correctly, a quarter of a million people. The result of this project can be seen in the authors own words: “In 1966 I spent eight hours by the canal. During this time there was one self-propelled barge which passed from Povenets to Soroka, and one, identical in type, from Soroka to Povenets. Their numbers were different, and it was only by their numbers that I could tell them apart and be sure it was not the same one as before on its way back. Because they were loaded altogether identically; with the very same pine logs which had been lying exposed for a long time and were useless for anything except firewood. And canceling one load against another we get zero. And a quarter of a million corpses to be remembered.” This was just for one construction project, by one work-camp, for one canal that apparently didn’t see much use.

This book has, if anything, increased my already deep hatred of Communism and my pledge to oppose anyone who would try to make America over in the Communist mold. Solzhenitsyn wrote this book not only to preserve the past, but to serve as a warning for the future. On the last page of the book he writes “All you freedom-loving “left wing” thinkers in the West! You left-laborites! You progressive American, German, and French students! As far as you are concerned, this whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it all someday – but only when you yourselves hear ‘hands behind your backs there!’ and step ashore on our Archipelago.”

Don’t say you weren’t warned.