What we're talking about for those not in the know
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, gave the term its international repute with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The author likened the scattered camps to "a chain of islands" and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death.[7] Some scholars support this view,[8][9] though this claim is controversial, given that the vast majority of people who entered the Gulag came out alive, with the exception of the war years.[10][11][12] Although one writer, citing pre-1991 materials, claims that most prisoners in the gulag were killed,[13] Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said in her memoirs that The Gulag Archipelago was based on "campfire folklore" as opposed to objective facts.[14] Similarly, historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft asserts that it is essentially a "literary and political work".[15] Numerous other accounts from survivors state otherwise and the Mitrokhin Archive claimed that these memoirs were part of a KGB campaign, orchestrated by Yuri Andropov in 1974, to discredit Solzhenitsyn.[16] However, this archive itself has its veracity in doubt; among other, more practical issues, by the same token with which Vasili Mitrokhin claimed the Soviet government would obviously be interested in discrediting Solzhenitsyn, Western governments would have as much interest in lending him credence
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Its also important to note : the big drop was that Lenin started labor camps -- it wasn't just all Stalin. See at the time, it was popular to say "oh man, if only Lenin didn't die and that total psycho Stalin didn't take over, this would all be so much better." This, however, is not a very popular opinion anymore...to put it lightly.
It's worth noting that we were -- ya know -- during prime cold war years (1973) when the west came out and portrayed this book as the best ever written and totally authoritative (it was a story not a sociological work with citations). So I guess you can believe that...I don't see why the fuck you would.
Meanwhile. Why not give it a quick read? Well, its because its a long pretentious written book by a intellectual that makes a long work out of a short point...not mention I don't find it particularly convincing that the entire soviet system was based around working people to death...it happened in the war years a bit, but it wasn't all that common in the USSR in general. Work yes...to death? no. There's not a lot of hard evidence of that BTW -- most the stories you hear about these camps are devoid of people being worked to death on documented interviews... its extremely common to hear about those that went to the gulag...most of them did not die it seems.
Another story to look out for:
The one about the woman in a big house that was only not killed by the communists because she was pregnant....yea its told all over the world -- its a freakn' legend not family history...the communist didn't knock on the doors of mansions and ask the people who the were etc...they found out before hand and just went there and grabbed you if they had a problem, which was the case if you were a landlord in China, or a Czarist during the revolutionary era of Russia. If you had a kid would make no difference.
Edit: I also feel it necessary to point out that Solzhenitsyn was a raging anti-semite -- so far right people love him for this as well.
06-21-2018, 12:47 AM
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