The Gulag Archipelago Vol.1 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

 My Thoughts On:

Me trying to explain this is like a flea standing on the bank of Lake Superior and trying to swallow her waters. Very vast. Very depressing. Very impressive. 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn explains in three volumes (I've only read the first as of yet), each volume six to seven hundred pages, the madness of Soviet Russia.
What is an archipelago? Wikipedia defines it as 'A chain, cluster or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered island.' Solzhenitsyn explains the great prison structure of the USSR as if it were an archipelago, a chain of gulags stretched out across Russia surrounded by an ocean of absolute misery. He himself was a victim of the prison system for many years, and during his time there, he strived to remember everything. The people, the places, the treatment of the prisoners, everything.

Ah, Communism. We must crush the petty bourgeoisie, we must elevate the poor worker. No, not the worker, the working class! Here we are all one, one great mass! And in order to elevate the downtrodden, well, a few sacrifices must be made. After all, our cause is just. 
That's the darn thing about communism. We're helping the working class, and the next thing you know, you're walking fifteen miles through the Siberian snow in the dark back to your unheated cattle car with maybe nothing but sandals on your frozen feet, no food in your stomach, and don't even think about water. What's wrong with the snow? And you must wonder: if everyone here, one's compatriots in prison, are all just unfortunate collateral, in the way of the communist utopia, then who is left to enjoy the utopia?
Not the estimated tens, likely hundreds, of millions dead, that's for sure.

I had trouble understanding some sections of this book, mostly those that involved the law and lots of Russian names and places (that's enough to confuse anyone) but the parts describing the the arrests, the interrogations, the tortures, and the prison are easy enough to understand, although not to comprehend. It's insane, completely and utterly insane. Everybody knows about Nazi Germany and its concentration camps, but fewer and fewer people are around who could tell you what a Gulag is. The Soviet Union was arguably worse than Nazi Germany. As Solzhenitsyn explains somewhere in the book, in this Communist utopia, there was never a question of guilt or innocence. In Hitler's Germany, a woman was tortured and interrogated and if, after many days she did not answer the questions given to her, they might let her go. She did not know what they wanted to know. In the USSR, your interrogators never expected you to know anything. That wasn't the point. The only point was terror and utter domination of the Russian people. 

Solzhenitsyn is a very brilliant writer, and achieved a level of perception about the world and people that hopefully none of us will achieve until we are dead. Here are some excerpts from the book I liked or thought were particularly illuminating:

'And how can you bring it home to them? By an inspiration? By a vision? A dream? Brothers! People! Why has life been given you? In the deep, deaf stillness of midnight, the doors of the death cells are being swung open - and great-souled people are being dragged out to be shot. On all the railroads of the country this very minute, right now, people who have just been fed salt herring are licking their dry lips with bitter tongues. They dream of the happiness of stretching out one's legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in summer and only to the depth of three feet - and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy.
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And then a little bit later:
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If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart - and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in ager; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory!
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And here we have the description of Communism supreme:
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"Where are our things?" they cried. "Your things you left at home!" some chief or other bellowed at them. "In camp nothing belongs to you. Here in camp we have communism! Forward march leader!"
And if it was "communism," then what was there for them to object to? That is what they had dedicated their lives to.

Until next time, God bless you and keep you safe.

~Irene