The Gulag Archipelago: Volume 1

It took the enormity of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago to make me figure out the best use for a companion blog to a book review channel. See, I am reading the unabridged version, which totals 1,816 pages over three volumes. This is an enormous amount of information to absorb. And while I am reviewing one volume each week, the totality of information needs to be carefully parsed to fully appreciate the horrors of Socialist Russia. And I initially had planned to write my impressions as a I reviewed the books. That ended up not quite happening, so now I’m finding it easier to just post my write ups in blog format.

Now, I’m starting this blog halfway through volume 1, so here are my first impressions.

1.   There is no rhyme or reason to why people were arrested. And it was very frequently not what we in America would think as a straightforward arrest. There were no uniformed officers walking up to a person and saying “Mr. So-and-So, you are under arrest for X charge.” And the police were frequently sneaky in their arrests, and Solzhenitsyn describes such techniques as taking a girl on a date, then driving her to the prison at Lubyanka.

2.   Solzhenitsyn traces the gulag system to the start of Socialism in Russia. Most people like to blame the entirety on Stalin, and he was certainly responsible for large chunks of the population, but this rot started at the very beginning with Lenin.

3.   Most people would use their knowledge to focus on a personal memoir. There is certainly that, but there is also this: Solzhenitsyn is using his platform and literary reach to share the stories of everyone he can, everyone he recalls having met in the Gulags. At the very least hundreds of people he had direct contact with are having bits of their stories told as well. And there were MILLIONS in the Gulag's.

4.   There was no justice in the Soviet “Justice System.” Almost every single person sentenced to hard labor, was done so extra-judiciously, by a bureaucrat at a desk.

5.   The Soviets were very creative with torture.

I’m 300 pages into the 1,800 page entirety and my mind is reeling with what the Russian people went through under socialism. And I remain completely baffled that anyone with two braincells to rub together would ever think that socialism was a good idea. The book last week was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, also by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In the introduction, written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Yevtushenko says that following Solzhenitsyn’s exile from Russia for having written The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn moved to Vermont. While there, Solzhenitsyn criticized the “all-permissiveness” of the West, and it’s insufficient intolerance of the communist regime in Russia. It’s deeply ironic that the leftists here like to use the Paradox of Tolerance to explain why they don’t support free speech. All of this said without a shred of self-reflection. While facism certainly has a track record for silencing dissent, the biggest silencer of dissent has always been socialism, by sheer numbers if nothing else. Anyone speaking out for freedom is automatically the enemy of a group that thinks the government should be in charge of everything.

This whole section was a crash course in how the Soviet justice system “evolved” from something actually resembling justice to the absolute farce that saw millions imprisoned without trial.

Again, Solzhenitsyn traces the beginning to Lenin. Showing this rot has existed since the murder of the Romanov’s. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, there were actual trials, with the outcome dependent on justice, mostly. I don’t know a lot about the Romanov’s, but pretty sure if they were totally just monarchs, the revolution might not have played out the way it did. But Solzhenitsyn takes us through some of the key trials the socialists used to establish their own power. Starting out, the trials were open, and The People were welcome to watch the proceedings and see “justice” being done. First up on the chopping block was free speech. Lead prosecutor Krylenko tried a newspaper. Not for slander. But because the paper had run an editorial…you know, editorials? We have them here in the US. Where someone writes in with their OPINION, which is taken to be neither endorsed nor refuted by the paper, as it is JUST SOMEONE’S OPINION. But papers with this trial were given clear notice not to publish anything that didn’t conform with party lines. Because Krylenko charged the paper with trying to influence people’s minds. Not only was free speech on trial, so was free thought. And the message starts being received by those who paid attention.

For those that did not, the Church came under trial soon enough. See, the policies put in place by the socialist regime quickly led to famine. Famine of the sort that people were eating their children, a not uncommon occurrence as we learned during my review of Mao’s Great Famine. And the church in Russia was one of the few places with resources still available to it.

Initially, the socialists approached the church and asked for donations. And the church agreed, as long as individual donations from churches were made voluntarily by the individual churches. When that ended up not being enough, the socialists began requisitioning church property in the name of unity. And eventually, all the churches were tried. And there goes freedom of religion.

And trial by trial, Russia lost the freedoms she HAD had under the Romanovs. And a pervading sense of fear took over. And it eventually became very clear that no-one was safe from being tried for whatever made up charge the party wanted to throw at them. Just to get them out of the way for voicing dissent.

Does any of this sound familiar? Especially while I was reading through the church trials…I kept remembering social media feed wherein people I know blame “The Church” for everything. Any church. Anything that falls under the aegis of Christianity, is being blamed for everything. Now, I’ve said before, I am not a Christian. But I don’t blame all of Christianity for the evils of the world. But in the Church, the socialists found a convenient scapegoat for their continuing failure. And people here are also looking for a convenient scapegoat for their failures.

Also, in line with social media, is the government trying to “work with” social media giants to identify “fake news".” Whether it’s fake or not is literally not the government’s job. And if social media maintains that it is a publishing platform, it’s not their job either. And yes, I understand there is a certain set of the weak minded who will argue that since SM is privately owned, they can dictate terms of what gets said on their platforms. But that is not the path to a free society. Intentionally stifling speech you disagree with makes you the monster. As Tom MacDonald says, there’s a difference between hate speech and speech that you hate. Too bad more people lack the nuance of thought to see that.

People say that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. That should be taken to mean global history. Because America is poised to repeat in the 21st century the mistakes that were made in 20th century Russia and China. And the results here will be equally if not more catastrophic.

So, that’s not quite all. While I had started the history of the trials, I finished them yesterday. And at one point, I found myself jumping to my feet and pacing around in frustration. Not with the book. I have nothing but admiration for the strength and courage it took to write this book, scarcely a decade out of the gulags, and still fully capable of being chucked back in. No, it was THIS passage:

“One couldn’t say the same about sixty-two-year-old Professor Charnovsky: Anonymous students had persecuted him in the wall newspapers. After twenty-three years of lecturing, he had been summoned to a general students’ meeting to “give an account of his work.” He hadn’t gone.”

Good on Professor Charnovsky. Good on Bret Weinstein, Dr. Jordan Peterson, and Dr. Gad Saad, too. Good on anyone who stands to lose everything, yet still stands against the screaming, unintelligible mobs who decry independent thought in favor mob mentality and the perpetually infantile and offended.

University used to be where you went to learn about the world and broaden your horizons. Sounds like at one time it was that way in Russia, too. But sometime during the socialist revolution, Stalin and Lenin recognized that the intelligentsia was dangerous. Why? Because they had the ability to analyze the policies the socialists wanted to put into play and see the far reaching consequences. Well, we can’t have that, now can we? And so, the intelligentsia were eventually tried and either exiled or imprisoned. Exile didn’t last long…too many of them were happy to go.

Yet here in North America, it’s already too late. The intelligent intelligentsia have already been chased out of the University system, leaving a very brave few to hold the line against the anti-intellectual children throwing childish tantrums when faced with ideas they dislike.

Solzhenitsyn then revealed two rather interesting historical facts. The death penalty in Russia was used more during the reign of the socialists, then under the Tsars. Under the Tsars, there were 50 crimes that could merit the death penalty. Under the socialists, that number swelled to 200. In the 20 years under Empress Elizabeth, there were no executions. Even the Empress Catherine was loath to actually execute anyone, even when warranted. But the socialists under Lenin and Stalin had no such qualms. Untold thousands were given an immediate sentence of 9 grams in the head.

The other fact is that prisoners had more rights under the Tsars, then they ever had under the socialist regimes. Under the Tsars, prisoners were allowed to gather in groups. They could grow food to supplement their diet. They could choose who they walked with in the courtyard. And they could use hunger strikes to effect changes to any of the above. Under the Soviet Socialists, none of the above applied. If they went on hunger strike, they were likely to be allowed to just starve to death.

And all of this is before we even GET to the Archipelago. All of this is just history. Background to understand how millions ended up in hard labor, for something no worse than having a thought…or knowing someone who is capable of thinking. Governments want their citizens divided and scared. They’ve been dividing us for decades. The current crisis is only the lynchpin being pulled to further separate us. I’m terrified to see what I will learn next from Aleksandr Solzhenistyn.

Apparently, there are 7 parts in total over the three volumes of the unabridged version. Volume 1 only has two parts, and part two is REALLY Short. So, I was able to read it all and finish out the book in a day.

Part two was about the abominable conditions on the transport to the Archipelago. Prisons were crowded. Transport was crowded. And filled with thieves. When I was in college, I was a criminal justice major, and I vaguely remember learning about the Russian criminal code. Their complex tattoos, even before the custom spread here to the States, were used to denote status among the convicts. And the top dog was the Prince of Thieves (if I am remembering correctly…those classes were longer ago than I care to admit, and the memory is admittedly a bit rustier than the more current readings). Well, the thief’s guild that runs the prisons, have been a time honored tradition at the very least through the Gulag system that dominated socialist Russia.

From the time the inmates were herded to the trains, they were subject to theft from the thieves. And the thieves worked in conjunction with the guards. To steal from the other inmates. And all of this was accepted by the guards, because the bulk of the inmates being transported were categorized as 58—political prisoners. Meaning anyone who had ever sneezed during one of Stalin’s speeches. If you ever expressed even a whisper of doubt of the policies being implemented, you were classified as 58, and you no longer had any rights.

And if you were truly fortunate, when you got to your final port, the camp was already there. For those not so lucky, the train would stop, they’d be ordered out, and then made to sleep on the ground until they could build the facilities. In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn posits why inmates would work so hard. And among the many ways they forced the labor was by forming the inmates into squads. Then telling them that if one of them didn’t work, none of them would eat. So, the inmates would force cooperation from those uninclined to work, to ensure that they at least would not starve. Effective.

On the way to the Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was lucky enough to meet an old timer, someone who had been moved to several camps. And the old timer gave him some advice that Solzhenitsyn was wise enough to listen to. Do not get yourself assigned to general labor. Find SOME SKILL, something, ANYTHING, that would make you valuable as a skilled laborer. Those assigned to general labor never lived out their sentence. They were literally worked to death, maintaining the camps for those with some level of skill. Not, understand, at the behest of those skilled. But because it was the duty of the unskilled labor to work until they dropped, to serve the socialist cause. And if you think escape was possible, think again. Siberia in winter routinely reaches temperatures of -40 degrees Fahrenheit.

And in this way, is a population that is overwhelmingly compiled of inmates, controlled by the guards set over them. Where would you go? Run off across the tundra? You’ll freeze to death inside a day. If you stay in the camp, you might at least live. Such as life is, in such conditions. I can’t wait to see what I learn from volume 2.

This post was more or less my review of Volume 1 of Gulag Archipelago, originally posted on YouTube on August 9, 2021, now available on Rumble and PodBean.