Gulag Archipelago

[VeratheFastest]

When I was on Stormfront, a member who actually was good at debating and polite and understood passion for things told me that I should read this book. And that if I think anything good of Stalin/Communism afterwards, I am inhuman and do not deserve to live

Is it any good?

Is it difficult to read?

[Question everything]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 12:07 am
When I was on Stormfront, a member who actually was good at debating and polite and understood passion for things told me that I should read this book. And that if I think anything good of Stalin/Communism afterwards, I am inhuman and do not deserve to live

Is it any good?

Is it difficult to read?
This is what Wikipedia says about it...


The Gulag Archipelago (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ) is an influential account of the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is a massive nonfiction narrative written based on eyewitness testimony and primary research material, as well as the author's own experiences as a prisoner in a Gulag labor camp. Written between 1958 and 1968 (dates given at the end of the book) it was published in the West in 1973, thereafter circulating in samizdat (underground publication) form in the Soviet Union until its official publication in 1989.

"GULag" is an acronym for the Russian term "Chief Administration for Corrective Labor Camps" (Russian: Главное Управление Лагерей), the bureaucratic name of the Soviet concentration camp main governing board, and by extension, the camp system itself. The original Russian title of the book is "Arkhipelag GULag", the rhyme supporting the underlying metaphor deployed throughout the work. The word archipelago compares the system of labor camps spread across the Soviet Union with a vast "chain of islands", known only to those who were fated to visit them.

The Guy you were Debating unfortunitely is probably some Idoit who denies the existance of the Holocost and doesn't know the difference between Communism and the USSR.

[VeratheFastest]

I forget the exact username but he has alot of letters & numbers in his username. They are ignoring me now because I think they think I am just a disillusioned youth who will wake up sooner or latter. When I first joined the site, a few people said I didn't deserve to breath but after I started explaining myself they became nicer somehow. I hope they don't hold theirs for a conversion.

I do not see any harm in reading this book. Can someone tell me more about hte author? I heard he was banned by the USSR?

[Question everything]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 12:23 am
I forget the exact username but he has alot of letters & numbers in his username. They are ignoring me now because I think they think I am just a disillusioned youth who will wake up sooner or latter. When I first joined the site, a few people said I didn't deserve to breath but after I started explaining myself they became nicer somehow. I hope they don't hold theirs for a conversion.

I do not see any harm in reading this book. Can someone tell me more about hte author? I heard he was banned by the USSR?
Nazis liking you is not a good sign.

Here...


Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, IPA: [ʌlʲɪˈksandr ɨˈsajɪvʲɪʨ səlʐɨˈnʲitsɨn] ; born December 11, 1918) is a Russian novelist, dramatist and historian. Through his writings, he made the world aware of the Gulag, and, for these efforts, Solzhenitsyn was both awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994. In 1994, he was elected as a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Department of Language and Literature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

[Raúl Duke]

I heard that the author was a religious fanatic (some say a la Dostoyevsky) who hated the USSR but didn't really love the secular capitalist countries either.

However...I'm not 100% sure.

[VeratheFastest]

It is Russia, I love Russian culture, and therefore have a inbuilt tolerance for all things Orthodox.

Was he a Tsarist?

[Raúl Duke]

No...because the Tsar was gone.

He probably perfer a "kingdom of god & christ".

He wanted the Orthodox Church to take over and something about "the rapture", etc (or so I heard).

[Rawthentic]

If you believe in Stalin and apologize for his crimes against working class brothers and sisters as well as against communists, you are not a communist yourself.

The greatest lie in human history is that Stalinism=Communism.

[wtfm8lol]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21, 2007 08:01 pm
If you believe in Stalin and apologize for his crimes against working class brothers and sisters as well as against communists, you are not a communist yourself.

The greatest lie in human history is that Stalinism=Communism.
you had better get used to it because the record shows thats the only way to get communists or socialists into power.

[Rawthentic]

Haha, what is this!!! :D :D :D

What record? How, according to your unlimited ignorance, do communists come to power?

Stalin got into power because he murdered and repressed all of his dissenters and working class people. Unlike imbeciles like you, I understand that Russia under Stalin was state-capitalist, with a petty-bourgeois ruling class in power, in the form of managers and "experts."

So face it, you don't have the ability to recognize what really went on and goes on, as well as material conditions.

[VeratheFastest]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 12:59 am
No...because the Tsar was gone.

He probably perfer a "kingdom of god & christ".

He wanted the Orthodox Church to take over and something about "the rapture", etc (or so I heard).
I really need to start referring to pro-monarchy websites because that is not the case with a small amount of people (some of them US citizens)...

The Rapture and Orthodoxy? I shudder to think of such a dangerous connection.

Has anyone liked this book? Absolutely hate it?
Is it worth buying?

[Janus]

Not sure why you would accept book recommendations from a fascist but anyone who equates Stalin with communism doesn't know what s/he's talking about.

Past thread on the author (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=7291&hl=+gulag++archipelago)

Discussion on Stalin (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=5200&hl=+gulag++archipelago)
Stalin (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=49516&hl=+gulag++archipelago)

[Rawthentic]

Thanks Janus, hopefully that will clear things up for these ignorant cockroaches.

[Chocobo]

I liked it, but I will say that it can be quite the put-to-sleep book. It's exciting, its boring, its fascinating, its unfulfilling. No harm in reading it, it is rather plump though (600 pages, small text). Gives a decent, first hand account of those imprisoned during the USSR. If you do read it, enjoy!

[Comrade Marcel]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a POS. In his latest book, he has resorted to old Zionist conspiracies and such and the nazis are really jacking off to it. He gets himself out of "trouble" from the mainstream by letting a rumor circulate that his wife is Jewish, which apparently it's ok in some people's mind to be a racist asshole so long as you bang someone who isn't white.

Solz. has also supported fascism in public. His work is highly questionable. While that wikipedia quote describes his books as highly researched, etc I think you will find most of his work is original research and mostly can't be confirmed. He also claims 60 million people where killed in the Stalin era, a number even the most reactionary of other "scholars" won't associate with. Most of these liars are trying to create a consensus of 20 millionish now, though most serious of the archivists say that is way over exaggerated.

Much of his work has been dubunked, do a search on some Marxist-Leninist websites and I am sure you can find something.

Also, try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Stalinist and post a question.

Here is a small excerpt on him from "Lies Concerning the History of the USSR" (http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9912/lies.htm)


Another person who is always associated with books and articles on the supposed millions who lost their lives or liberty in the Soviet Union is the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn became famous throughout the capitalist world towards the end of 1960 with his book, The Gulag Archipelago. He himself had been sentenced in 1946 to 8 years in a labour camp for counter-revolutionary activity in the form of distribution of anti-Soviet propaganda. According to Solzhenitsyn, the fight against Nazi Germany in the Second World War could have been avoided if the Soviet government had reached a compromise with Hitler. Solzhenitsyn also accused the Soviet government and Stalin of being even worse than Hitler from the point of view, according to him, of the dreadful effects of the war on the people of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn did not hide his Nazi sympathies. He was condemned as a traitor.

Solzhenitsyn began in 1962 to publish books in the Soviet Union with the consent and help of Nikita Khrushchev. The first book he published was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, concerning the life of a prisoner. Khrushchev used Solzhenitsyn's texts to combat Stalin's socialist heritage. In 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature with his book The Gulag Archipelago. His books then began to be published in large quantities in capitalist countries, their author having become one of the most valuable instruments of imperialism in combating the socialism of the Soviet Union. His texts on the labour camps were added to the propaganda on the millions who were supposed to have died in the Soviet Union and were presented by the capitalist mass media as though they were true. In 1974, Solzhenitsyn renounced his Soviet citizenship and emigrated to Switzerland and then the US. At that time he was considered by the capitalist press to be the greatest fighter for freedom and democracy. His Nazi sympathies were buried so as not to interfere with the propaganda war against socialism.

In the US, Solzhenitsyn was frequently invited to speak at important meetings. He was, for example, the main speaker at the AFL-CIO union congress in 1975, and on 15 July 1975 he was invited to give a lecture on the world situation to the US Senate! His lectures amount to violent and provocative agitation, arguing and propagandising for the most reactionary positions. Among other things he agitated for Vietnam to be attacked again after its victory over the US. And more: after 40 years of fascism in Portugal, when left-wing army officers took power in the people's revolution of 1974, Solzhenitsyn began to propagandise in favour of US military intervention in Portugal which, according to him, would join the Warsaw Pact if the US did not intervene! In his lectures, Solzhenitsyn always bemoaned the liberation of Portugal's African colonies.

But it is clear that the main thrust of Solzhenitsyn's speeches was always the dirty war against socialism - from the alleged execution of several million people in the Soviet Union to the tens of thousands of Americans supposedly imprisoned and enslaved, according to Solzhenitsyn, in North Vietnam! This idea of Solzhenitsyn's of Americans being used as slave labour in North Vietnam gave rise to the Rambo films on the Vietnam war. American journalists who dared write in favour of peace between the US and the Soviet Union were accused by Solzhenitsyn in his speeches of being potential traitors. Solzhenitsyn also propagandised in favour of increasing US military capacity against the Soviet Union, which he claimed was more powerful in 'tanks and aeroplanes, by five to seven times, than the US' as well as in atomic weapons which 'in short' he alleged were 'two, three or even five times' more powerful in the Soviet Union than those held by the US. Solzhenitsyn's lectures on the Soviet Union represented the voice of the extreme right. But he himself went even further to the right in his public support of fascism.

[Zero]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 01:01 am
If you believe in Stalin
I attempt to disbelieve!

Fumble, drat. I guess it did happen. =|

[Question everything]

Originally posted by Zero+April 23, 2007 08:43 pm--> (Zero @ April 23, 2007 08:43 pm)
[email protected] 22, 2007 01:01 am
If you believe in Stalin
I attempt to disbelieve!

Fumble, drat. I guess it did happen. =| [/b]
... I don't think that's what he meant...

[luxemburg89]

And that if I think anything good of Stalin/Communism

Never, ever, use those words interchangeably.

yours angrily, lux

[gilhyle]

Solzhenitsyn was a great novelist....and an extreme political reactionary who really was a Tsarist. I recommend his novels they are a really good read.

The Gulag Archipeligo is hard to read its boring but its an important record of suffering - however in accurate and speculative in parts. Communists should never forget the horrors of the camps.

Reading him is part of what made me a Communist......and that would disappoint him. :D