Rating: 
Summary: This Terrific Book WIll Become The Standard Bearer!
Review: With the publication of "The Gulag Archipelago" in the early 1970s, Alexander Solzhenitsyn shocked and dismayed the Western world by masterfully detailing the existence of a horrific shadow culture within the Soviet Union, a culture comprised of a mass society of slave laborers scratching out their bare-knuckled survival in unbelievable difficulty and squalor, and having been recruited into the Gulag for a variety of economic, social, and political reasons. Given the inherent limitations of this superb albeit shocking fictional work, the West had to wait for the fall of the Soviet bloc for a more definitive and more complete treatise on the nature of the Gulag. This new book by scholar-turned-journalist Anne Applebaum represents such a work. The work is both massive and comprehensive, dealing not only with the ways in which the Gulag came into existence and then thrived under the active sponsorship of Lenin and Stalin, but also with a plethora of aspects of life within the Gulag, ranging from its laws, customs, folklore, and morality on the one hand to its slang, sexual mores, and cuisine on the other. She looks at the prisoners themselves and how they interacted with each other to the relationships between the prisoners and the many sorts of guards and jailers that kept them imprisoned. For what forced the Gulag into becoming a more or less permanent fixture within the Soviet system was its value economically in producing goods and services that were marketable both within the larger Soviet economy as well as in international trade. As it does in China today, forced labor within the Gulag for the Soviets represented a key element in expanding markets for Soviet-made goods ranging from lamps to those prototypically Russian fur hats. The Gulag came into being as a result of the Communist elite's burning desire for purges of remaining vestiges of bourgeoisie aspects of Soviet culture, and its consequent need for some deep dark hole to stick unlucky cultural offenders into to remove them semi-permanently from the forefront of the Soviet society. Stalin found it useful to expand the uses of the camp system to enhance industrial growth, and the camps became flooded with millions of Soviets found wanting in terms of their ultimate suitability for everyday life in the workers' paradise. Thus, the Gulag flourished throughout the 1920s and 1930s and even through the years of WWII, when slave labor provided an invaluable aid in producing enough war goods to help defeat the Axis powers. By the peak years of Gulag culture in the 1950s, the archipelago stretched into all twelve of the U.S. S. R.'s time zones, although it was largely concentrated in the northernmost and least livable aspects of the country's vast geographical areas. One of the most interesting and certainly more controversial aspects of the book can be found in its consideration of the relative obscurity with which both the existence and horrors associated with the Gulag has been treated to date. Compared to the much more extensively researched and discussed Holocaust of Europe's Jewish population perpetrated by the Nazi Third Reich over a twelve year period, almost nothing is known about the nearly seventy reign of the Gulag. Given the fairly recent demise of the Soviet state, and the dawning availability of data revealing the particulars of the existence of the Soviet system of political imprisonment, forced labor camps, and summary executions, one expects this massively documented, exhaustively detailed, and memorably written work will serve as the standard in the field for decades to come. This is a terrific book, and one I can heartily recommend to any serious student of 20th century history. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Illuminating one of modern history's darkest chapters
Review: Anne Applebaum has done a magnificent job of shedding light on the 20th century Soviet penal system as embraced by the vast network of Gulag camps. Thoroughly researched, this account draws fascinating and important distinctions between prisons and camps, as well as between the various types of individuals contained therein (e.g. 'politicals' versus 'criminals'), the roles each group played, and the treatment each received. The plight of female prisoners, including those pregnant and already with children, represents one of the more heart-rending threads in the book. The Gulag camps and their administration were a bewildering mixture of rules and 'norms' issued by Joseph Stalin and his sycophants back in Moscow on the one hand, and arbitrary decisions made by local camp authorities on the other. The whim of a guard often meant the difference between life and death for a camp inmate. It is difficult to grasp just how much suffering was endured by so many, but Ms. Applebaum, through her numerous anecdotes obtained from persons who survived the camps, gives the reader a very good sense of what it must have been like. Even the prison guards often had insufficient food, and nowhere decent to sleep. There were even bizarre situations in Gulag camps where prisoners were promoted as guards, and guards demoted to be prisoners. One of the most chilling messages of the book is that, for thousands of Gulag victims, it was preferable to injure or mutilate oneself (e.g. by swallowing barbed wire or glass, or by tearing off and eating one's own flesh) and thereby be unable to work, than it was to suffer the harsh conditions of mining, heavy manufacturing and logging, for which the remote northern camps were notorious. Certain huge construction projects, such as railroads and highways that led to nowhere, and an aborted tunnel (!) to Sakhalin Island near Japan, ended up as mass graves for thousands of helpless souls. Here are two brief illustrations of just how cruel and destructive the Gulag world was: 1. Camp authorities often released prisoners near death, so as to keep the camp's death count within thresholds that would allow camp authorities to keep their jobs; 2. a husband and wife finally met up in freedom, after over ten years of having lived apart in separate camps. The husband, upon seeing that his wife was in relatively good physical shape, readily concluded that she had slept with her captors in exchange for more food and|or lighter work duties. With this, he decided to have nothing more to do with his wife. Meanwhile, had the wife not done what she did, she could have easily perished; for her, her actions were a matter of survival. I highly recommend this book. Anyone interested in learning more about the paranoid machinations of Stalin will want to read both "Gulag" and "The Fall of Berlin", by Antony Beevor.
Rating:
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.
Rating: 
Summary: well done
Review: A very good book, deserving of all the acclaim it has gained.
Rating:
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.
Rating: 
Summary: indeed
Review: To begin with, AA lost one star for overusing the word "indeed" The book is very readable and well researched. However, after being done with it I looked up the author and found a lot of rather lame articles discussing modern Russia to her name. How about "You've Come a Long Way, Babushka!" a piece by AA on Slate.com Or concluding the article, a part of which is dedicated to criticizing G-7 for allowing Russia to join in, with, "Next year we could invite the Egyptians, in recognition of their forebears who built the pyramids. The following year, the descendants of the Aztecs. And why not a summit meeting in Iraq? After all, Mesopotamia once mattered too." this review will most likely be of no use to you because it rates the author rather then the book, nevertheless it is a tad annoying to have a person who writes such populists articles about your country receive a Pulitzer for writing a decent book on a subject that is either forgotten or considered taboo. Is there no one else who could do the job, good lord? is there no one else!? I suppose asking for some snobby intellectual who would not dare title any of hers editorials (published on a Microsoft owned website) with "The Gulag Argumento" to have written the book about the subject so hideously tragic it doesn't stand a chance of completely entering our consciousness in not too much to ask. Yet the Pulitzer falls to Ann... awwww... the history of the motherland is a tragic one, indeed.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: accumulation of information
Review: Next to Shalamov,Solzhenitsyn, and Ginzburg, Ms Applebaum's book is, for me, just an accumulation of information.
Rating:
Summary: Don't judge this book by its cover
Review: Anne Applebaum raises an excellent point at the beginning of "Gulag": Why aren't the horrors of the Soviet Union's prison system better known or acknowledged as among the worst atrocities of human history? Perhaps the answer to that question would make for a compelling sequel to this book. But admirably Applebaum keeps a very tight rein on the ideological battles that rage in Russian studies (see other reviews!) and sticks to the facts-many of which a nonspecialist would have no access to in such detail before this book. As a child who was lucky enough to encounter "The Endless Steppe" at an impressionable age, I was grateful to find such a nonpolemical and graceful introduction to this topic. This book is comprehensive and well structured, and free of the jargon and awkward writing that afflicts many histories. Applebaum also allows for some lyricism when writing about the landscapes of the Russian Far East and the doomed romances between prisoners-although she usually lets the facts and the prisoners' own words speak for themselves. Don't be put off by the grim cover and daunting heft of this book: it's a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Plodding read at times, but superbly insightful
Review: This book in particular and this genre in general makes for fascinating and insightful reading for the (arguable) reason that the cumulative actions of Stalin's Russia, from the Gulags to World War II to the dawn of the Cold War, did more to shape world events than any other leader of the 20th century. The Gulag system was frightening in its sophisticated operation and scale. It illustrates the complete lack of logic, reason, and compassion that human beings are capable of.
The book is expertly researched and sweeping in its coverage. The downside to reading it is that rather then being presented as a straight chronological history, some of the chapters are presented by topic instead. While it generally moves forward, where the chapters jump back and reevaluate a given period from a different perspective, the effect on the reader is rather plodding.
| 
