Gulag: A History

Anne Applebaum’s Gulag deals with the human cost of the Soviet concentration camp system and the price the average Russian had to pay for the new utopia. She writes, “Even in prison-camp slang, the world outside the barbed wire was not referred to as freedom but as the big prison zone larger and less deadly than the small zone of the camp but not more human- and certainly not more humane.” The history of the Gulag is the history of Stalin’s Soviet and lies as an indictment of a whole ideology. Why read this book? Too many of us really do not know much about the Gulag. We have memorials to the holocaust but none for the Gulag. We simply do not understand why it matters.

From the very beginning, official information about the Soviet Camps was available for all to see but too often ignored. Anne Applebaum makes one interesting aspect of how many Western intellectuals actually were sympathetic to the goals of the Soviet System and often judged the Soviet Union not so much for results but for the stated ideals. They were perfectly willing to ignore the Gulag and the totalitarian nature of the Soviet System. As Anne Applebaum noticed, “those who wrote “favorably” about the Soviet Union won more access to archives, more access to official information, longer visas in the country… Of course, it goes without saying, of course, that no outsiders were allowed access to any material about Stalin’s camp.” One professor recently stated, “Many of my students have never even heard of the gulag.”

Going through the book, one thing comes to mind. Soviet camp system matched their Nazis counterpart for cruelty. Yet, we do not honor the victims of the Gulag nor even truly remember them. It is as if they disappeared from the pages of history as they disappeared from the daily life of the former Soviet Union.

Ms. Applebaum is determined that these victims will not be forgotten and she puts a human face upon the history of the Gulag. We are not just given the facts as impressive as they are but we are exposed to their stories. Ms. Applebaum’s book should end that nonsense that the Cold War was a mere misunderstanding. It was truly a battle of good vs. evil and Ms. Applebaum demonstrates the evil that permeated the Soviet system.

Article Author: Tom Donelson

Visit Tom Donelson's author page — Tom Donelson's Blog