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Summary: Truly a monumental work.
Review: Congratulations to Ms. Applebaum on delving into a subject so terrible in nature and scope that even today, about a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, former Soviet leaders and appartchiks can't face the truth. In many cases they simply deny the existence of the horrors created by the Soviet system. They deny the horrors for which they themselves were responsible! Here in the west, we also have people and institutions that deny the crimes of the Soviet Union (the late columnist Walter Duranty and the New York Times respectively). Indeed, it makes one think that if only the world community brought more pressure on the Soviets then MILLIONS of innocent lives could have been saved. The book also puts into perspective all situations where despotism rears its ugly head and the need for those that are free to intervene on behalf of the innocent anywhere around the world. This book is an absolute must read!
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Summary: An Important Book
Review: For anyone who has seen any of Tom Clancy's earlier works, the Gulag would have been impossible to miss. The Russian prison which by uttering the very word which was its name would create tension throughout a room. American propoganda fueled Clancy's awe for the system during the Cold War period. The next in line happened to be a journalist named Anne Applebaum."Gulag" is an important book for understanding the truths and lies spread by Americans about the Russian system of high-security imprisonment. The book does not salute any actions taken by the Russians but does manage to dispel a few of the rumors along the way. For anyone with interest in the old Soviet Union and more specifically the infamous gulag, this is a MUST read. And for those who are only interested in finding a fact or two to spice up a conversation, this book is written in such a way which is lucid and intelligently pleasing to the brain.
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Summary: A shockingly decriptive reality...
Review: GULAG is an acronym of the Russian words Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei. Literally, in English, it means Main Camp Administration but on a broader scale Gulag became known as the Soviet sytems of slave labor, referring to all of their camps, from concentration camps to punishment camps and even children's camps. Ms. Applebaum makes a very good point in her introduction, as she explains that "to many people, the crimes of Stalin do not inspire the same visceral reaction as the crimes of Hitler" despite the fact that during the years of Stalin's reign, millions more suffered than the numbers killed by the German concentration camps. Every once in a while, I find myself drawn to a nonfiction book and this one caught my attention and held it from beginning to end as I learned about the atrocities that affected nearly every Russian living during this time period. If they were not personally enslaved in one of the work camps, they knew someone who had been. People were arrested for the most minor crimes and offenses in order to fill the camps with working bodies to maintain the high level of production demanded by their superiors. Those imprisoned suffered from starvation and exhaustion to the point where many reports of self-mutilation were recorded in an effort to earn themselves a vacation in the camp hospital, where rest and higher rations of food were available. There is so much information in this book I can hardly imagine the amount of time involved in preparing it. I was very impressed not only with Ms. Applebaum's knowledge but also her ability to portray many different aspects of the camps, giving the reader an inside look at a system that should only exist on paper.
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Summary: The Horror of History
Review: Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum is the first compresive account of the Soviet system of forced labor and random terror. Now that the shroud of secrecy and propaganda is lifted, the reality of twentieth century Soviet Union, and especially the period of Stalin's rule, is of a catastrophically malfunctioning totalitarian state. At times the horror of the Gulag is almost unfathomable. Applebaum's research here is clearly very thorough. She makes ample use of survivor memoirs, recently opened Soviet archives, and interviews. Gulag is an unwavering look at a piece of human history that is difficult to behold. Any inclination to sympathise with the Soviets is dispelled by this remarkable book.
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Summary: If only Stalin knew ...
Review: Having read dozens of books on the Holocaust over the years, I was surprised at how emotionally draining I found this book. Statistics are inevitable in this subject - and also important: past disputes over the numbers of Stalin's dead (for example by Robert Conquest and his detractors) had to be fought. But Applebaum takes us beyond the numbers into the heartbreaking stories of the individual victims. Making extensive, but not uncritical use, of survivors' memoirs, she brings the horrors of the Gulag into distressingly sharp focus.
She also proffers some possible explanations for the Gulag system beyond merely asserting that Stalin was an evil paranoiac (which he undoubtedly was). I was interested to learn, for example, quite how strong the economic motive was for turning hundreds of thousands of innocent people into slave labourers. Stalin and the senior Bolsheviks saw this as a perfectly legitimate way of rapidly developing remote and primitive parts of the Russian hinterland.
I now wait, no doubt in vain, for one of the many surviving Western defenders of the Soviet system to admit their grotesque willful blindness and to apologise to its millions of victims.
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Summary: Worth the Pulizter Buzz
Review: I bought this book due to the pre-Pulitzer buzz surrounding it. And while it was well written and worth the money, I could not finish it. It was too painful. As others have noted, "Gulag" breaks little new ground. Rather, its utility was to gather in one place the sum of information out there, and put that information into a form easy to understand. And that Anne Applebaum does. By reference to memoirs (of which there are a surprising number) and studies of official Soviet documents, she traces the history of the Gulag from Lenin's camps for counterrevolutionary elements, to Stalin's vast economic camps, to the post Stalin jails. It is all there. Also there is the evidence that the West "knew" of the camps from the beginning, giving lie to the belief among the Left that the camps were a secret, or a counter-revolutionary myth created by Winston Churchill. Interesting how Gulag-denial mirrors Holocaust denial. Applebaum began her book when she noted that while Nazi Germany was rightly regarded by all civilized people with horror, the Soviet Union and the communist experiment continues to have its supports, and instead of horror, the most of the rest look on the Soviet Union with humor. She wondered why, and the search for the answer led her to the Gulag. But she never really answers her own question. Others have tried most recently Martin Amis. As Amis said in his work "Koba the Dread" perhaps the answer is that the Hitler regime just "feels" worse. But perhaps there is no answer. Choosing between Hitler and Stalin is like choosing between cholera and the plague. In any event, this work is a wonderful overview for anyone interested in the 20th Century's other awful tyranny.
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Summary: A Superb Study, BUT....
Review: I cannot possibly add to the dozens of positive reviews already posted here. Applebaum deserves to be commended for her comprehensive and eye-opening study. However, I would like to make one comment about the book: Its greatest strength is, ironically, its greatest weakness. In other words, so thorough and detailed is The Gulag that it frequently leaves the reader feeling exhausted -- literally. Chapter by chapter, we are taken through virtually every conceivable aspect of the Soviet concentration camp system -- prison life, administration, logistics, et al. Quite frankly, Applebaum could have cut the text by 30%, distilled the essence/significance of the deleted sections, and still produced a significant contribution to the literature. Unfortunately, the book's often suffocating verbosity ensures that I do NOT want to read any more on the subject, my curiosity being utterly satiated. The smallest of topics are routinely taken apart ad infinitum. In the end, I cannot say whether the tome would have been better heavily abridged -- or slightly expanded and turned into a definitive, multi-volume study....
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Summary: More than I ever wanted to know
Review: I purchased this book to fill in the huge gaps in my understanding of the soviet union, the gulag, it's history. I thought it was a fantastic book, well written, thorough. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the incompetence of bureacracies, the delusionary plans of stalin and man's inhumanity to man. The book detailed the horror, the irony and even some inspiring experiences of the prisoners. I recommend this book to anyone with even the slightest interest in this topic. I do suggest that perhaps a reader might want to read something a little more light hearted when finished with this book. This is a book that STAYS with you.
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Summary: A difficult, but needed work
Review: I suspect the definitive history of the Gulag system is still some decades away, and will likely be written by a Russian. Nevertheless, this is a good early survey. The Author brings a journalist's immediacy rather than a historian's depth to the project, and at this point, perhaps that is best. She spent a great deal of effort and time interviewing, searching archives, and reviewing the available memoirs to put together this volume. As the access to the archives seems to be in some question for now, this will likely be the benchmark work in English for some time. For those who have not experienced the reality of the Soviet system, this is a good introduction. Acronymns and Soviet terms are clearly explained, and kept to a minimum, so a familiarity of Soviet history is not required. This is an accesible account, that will appeal to the general reader, although by no means an easy subject. One complaint, as an American, I was disappointed that the author did not include as a source Polish-American Jesuit Walter Ciszek, who spent 23 years in Stalin's prisons and camps, although the memoirs of American Alexander Dolgun are. As the author laments, there is still perhaps a certain amount of, if not denial, at least unwillingness by many Russians to delve into this topic. In time, I feel certain that will change. The cold war ended, thankfully, not with a bang, but a wimper. No allied troops marched into Moscow. The Soviet regime collapsed of its own corruption and flawed ideology. The Russians themselves will have to come to grips with the reality of their history. Perhaps this book can be another helpful step in the process.
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Summary: From the cover to the credits, this book is INCREDIBLE!!!!!
Review: I took one look at the cover of this book and the name, "Gulag" and was inspired to get a copy. All I can say is that if you have an interest in Russian history or the diabolical realities of Communism, then READ THIS BOOK!! An absolutely engaging, unbaised, fair and balanced look at the many factors that made the "Gulag" what it was. Well-researched and filled with juicy morsels, this book is a MUST READ!
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