Lately, I seem to be locked and loaded on a theme of human evil and complicity therein. Which brings me to Anne Appplebaum's book about the Soviet Gulags. Aleksandr Solzehnitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" was the pathbreaking work that brought the Gulags into public discourse, and deeply affected a nascent political movement called neoconservatism along the way. Anne Applebaum's recently-released "Gulag: A History" is likely to become the definitive scholarly treatment. It's making waves, and deservedly so.
Geitner Simmons found an AEI speech by Applebaum, with lots of material that's worth your time. For me, this is the money paragraph:
"From Aktyubinsk to Yakutsk, there was not a single major population center that did not have its own local camp or camps, and not a single industry that did not employ prisoners. Over the years, prisoners built roads and railroads, power plants and chemical factories, manufactured weapons, furniture, even childrens’ toys. In the Soviet Union of the 1940s, the decade the camps reached their zenith, it would have been difficult, in many places, to go about your daily business and not run into prisoners. It is no longer possible to argue, as some Western historians have done, that the camps were known to only a small proportion of the population."One day, there must be a reckoning for the deliberate ignorance and excuses beyond the Soviet Union as well. If the Russians cannot credibly claim ignorance, well, neither can we.
One day, too, there must be a reckoning in Russia itself. Not a physical reckoning, so much as a spiritual reckoning. The camp systems remained in operation long past the 1940s, as Andrei Sakharaov and (now Israeli Deputy PM) Natan Sharansky could tell you. Just as the camps of Dachau et. al. were a stain on German history and - to use a German Romantic term - the German soul, so the Gulags of Russia are an historical and psychic shadow that haunts them still.
UPDATES: Links to the Amazon reviews etc. for all of the books mentioned here can be found via Blogcritics.org.
Mike Daley points me to this article by Alexander Rose as an additional source of insight into Applebaum's book and the Gulag itself:
"The Gulag witnessed the birth pangs of the Soviet Empire (let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?) — and its death-throes. Mutually parasitic, neither Gulag nor Empire could survive, let alone thrive, without the other. The duo comprised a curiously Siamese entity: One was but half of two; when one dies, so too must the other. Maintaining the awful majesty of Empire required slave labor; Gulag supplied it. Gulag required slaves; Empire supplied them."
I've been posting this comment on the post linking to the Amazon review for the books at Blogcritics but I think it's worth repeating here, particularly since you've just put up two excellent post dealing with the Communist concentration system and oppressive apparatus:
"I'm sure it's not a deliberate negligence on your side, but - widening the scope from the Soviet Gulag to the Chinese Laogai and beyond - I think this list would be more complete with the rather comprehensive work of Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek and Jean-Louis Margolin, "Le Livre Noir du Communisme : crimes, terreur, répression", translated to English by Mark Kramer and Jonathan Murphy as *"The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression"*.
From October 1917 to Ethiopia 1990, via Afghanistan and Nicaragua, this is a careful record that may come as a shock but is indeed a must read for anybody serious about fighting one of the most criminal utopia and its modern extensions, including the most unexpected (really?) ones -- I'd love to know, for instance, what were the Palestinians doing alongside the Cubans, the East Germans and the Bulgarians, deporting populations for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua between 1982 and 1987 -- This book is definitely one of my bedtime/all time readings."
What he said. I focused in on one aspect of human evil in those systems today, but there is of course much more and Dissident Frogman gives you the all-time best book on that subject.
I also used Admin. powers and fixed DF's link. Should work now.
And by the way, note where this book was written and published. That's right, France.
The country may be a bit if a write-off these days, but that shouldn't blind us to the fact that it also has a cadre of intellectuals like these fellows, Jean-Francoise Revel, Levy, and others. They are stars in the firmament of Western Civilization, and some of the best people its defenders could hope to fight alongside. They deserve wider recognition.
I've almost finished reading Applebaum's book, and a few more key points bear mentioning:
The GULAG was, in fact, a severe economic drain on the USSR. They were never profitable in a real business sense, and in many respects they retarded Russia's development. Russia's best and brightest were sent to the camps because of Stalin's paranoia and brutality. They worked under the worst conditions, and had to be coerced and brutalized to perform any productive work. Many died in the camps, or were sentenced to exile in remote logging camps after their release. Stalin's "enemies of the people" included just about anyone having intelligence, initiative, and the capability for independent thought. In other words, the most innovative and productive people in Russia were systematically eliminated. The resulting loss to Russia's economic development is incalculable.
A large Russian criminal class was also firmly established as a result of the camps (a rather sad legacy that Russia still lives with). Estimates vary, but about half of the camp inmates were ordinary criminals and thugs, including mass murderers, rapists, and the psychotically violent. Many camps were, in effect, run by a well-organized criminal heirarchy, and in the camps they perfected the arts of intimidation, violence, extortion, secrecy, and clandestine economic activity. They carried these "skills" with them to the outside world after their release. Most of Russia's present economy is run by criminal camp veterans and their descendents, or by the corrupt local party officials with whom they were often associated.
The camps caused severe disruptions to the social fabric of Russia that are still in evidence today. Families were torn apart, mothers (sometimes accompanied by their children) were sentenced to hard labor for "offenses" such as telling a political joke. In spite of claims made by Soviet propagandists, Russia was plagued with street criminals, orphans, homeless children (who often turned to crime as their only means of support), and destitute families whose fathers had been sent off to remote GULAG camps. The lessons learned by the general population were all negative: not to think, not to be creative, not to show initiative, not ot criticize any government action, not to share one's thoughts with others.
These are the sad legacies of Communism that Russia still lives with. Anyone having the slightest shred of sympathy for coerced socialism should read this book and feel very ashamed.
I note no mention of America's drug war gulag.
We imprision people at a furious rate for using or distributing the wrong kind of drugs. Drugs that were at one time in America sold over the counter.
America has about 6% of the world population and 25% of the world's prisoners.
The system has many of the same features as the Russian gulag. It destroys families. It is an over all economic drain, but certain favored groups and individuals profit handsomely.
No one notices.
We are all good Germans or is it Russians here?
Drug users are enemies of the state. Welcome to America.
I just snagged Applebaum's book myself, after re-reading Kundera's The Joke, and I have to wonder what Applebaum herself wonders in the Introduction -- why is there no Schindler's List about the Gulag? Why is there no effort by producers of cultural products to remind us constantly about the lessons of the Gulag and the Great Terror the way we are (justifably) reminded of the Holocaust?
I've very much enjoyed the openness with which Chinese cinema has presented the evils of the Cultural Revolution. Ironically, these films are well-received by Hollywood. Could it be that Hollywood will only accept anti-Stalinist films from Russians and Europeans themselves?
Matthew, I myself have often wondered why the horrors of Stalin and the Soviet Union have been ignored by the film industry.
The tunnel vision focus on the Holocaust in Nazi Germany has always struck me as strange since similar anti-Semitic violence took place in the Middle East and the Soviet Union during that time and for long after.
I'm a little over halfway through the book... excellent all the way through. There seems to be a constant thread in some of my recent readings, about how thin the veneer of civilization truly is...