Gulag : a history of the Soviet camps

by Anne Applebaum

Paper Book, 2003

Status

Available

Call number

365.45094709041

Collection

Publication

London : Penguin, 2004, c2003.

Description

A fully documented history of the Soviet camp system, from its origins in the Russian Revolution to its collapse in the era of glasnost. Anne Applebaum first lays out the chronological history of the camps and the logic behind their creation, enlargement, and maintenance. Applebaum also examines how life was lived within this shadow country: how prisoners worked, how they ate, where they lived, how they died, how they survived. She examines their guards and their jailers, the horrors of transportation in empty cattle cars, the strange nature of Soviet arrests and trials, the impact of World War II, the relations between different national and religious groups, and the escapes, as well as the extraordinary rebellions that took place in the 1950s. She concludes by examining the disturbing question why the Gulag has remained relatively obscure, in the historical memory of both the former Soviet Union and the West.… (more)

Media reviews

Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History is the first volume that attempts to give a detailed and fairly comprehensive narrative of the origin, purpose, workings, and reality of the system based both on the memoirs of those who lived through and survived the camps and on the now-available archive
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documents in Russia.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
During its more than 60 years of operation, more than 30 million people passed through the Gulag, millions of them never to return. I first became interested in the topic through the writings of Solzhenitsin, and my interest was reignited a few years ago when I read The Whisperers: Private Life in
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Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes (which I highly recommend, by the way, despite the recent revelations of Figes' unethical and possibly illegal actions).

Applebaum's book begins with a chronological overview of the system, which existed even in Tsarist times. In its second section, the book explores every aspect of the Gulag experience, from arrest, to interrogation, to trial, to transportation to the camps (during which there was a high mortality rate), to actual life in the camps. Life in the camps is explored from the point of view of the prisoners and the administrators. The prisoners themselves were a diverse group--the politicals and the actual criminals, prisoners of war and other foreigners. The experiences of women prisoners uniquely included sexual abuse, as well as childbirth.

Applebaum was the first to utilize the newly released official archives of the Soviet Gulag administration, and so she is able to explore not only the personal experiences of day-to-day life in the camps, but also the how's and why's of the existence of the Gulag itself. For example, she thoroughly analyzes the issue of the underlying purposes of the Gulag. Was it intended to remove undesireable elements from society, whether politicals or true criminals, or was it merely a device to obtain slave labor? The Gulag system was indeed a large portion of the Soviet economic system, and there is ample evidence that the Soviets used the system to colonize remote and hostile regions of the country, as well as to exploit the valuable natural resources of those areas, but there is also evidence of Stalin's paranoia. Applebaum also ponders the controversial issue of why for so many years the crimes against humanity resulting from this system were all but ignored, even as memorials were raised for Holocaust victims.

This is an important book, because as compelling as the individual survivor memoirs are, they do not present the whole picture. This book undertakes to give us the universal as well as the personal. It is compellingly readable in addition to being academically documented, and I highly recommend it..
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LibraryThing member labfs39
I can’t say enough good things about this book. Anne Applebaum has taken advantage of recent archive openings in Russia and conducted thorough and detailed research of the newly available material. Her findings are changing the way people think about the Soviet Gulag system. In the past, most
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historians had to rely on survivor memoirs and the classic history, The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn for their information. I think this caused a bias toward the point of view and experience of dissident writers. Applebaum’s use of newly opened archives allows her to uncover the government’s agenda, statistics, and methods; as well as prisoner records, including those of criminals, non-political prisoners, and collaborators who were less likely to share their stories. The result is a new perspective, one that Applebaum thoughtfully and articulately explores.

The first and last sections are chronological in structure, but in the middle section, Applebaum chose to break her material into topics, such as punishment and reward, guards, and women and children. These sections are particularly descriptive and evocative of life in the camps. In addition, I found her comparison of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet labor camps concise and convincing. Her explication of the Gulag as a deliberate and organized economic system was eye-opening: the extent to which the Soviets were willing to go to create and maintain such a system, even in the face of obvious losses, was shocking. I also learned how erroneous I was in my preconception that the Gulag was populated primarily by political prisoners.

Although I found the introduction to sound a bit like a graduate student’s paper, the rest of the book was engrossing and highly readable. I only wish there had been more photos, especially of some of the Central Asian camps. In any case, I highly recommend this Pulitzer Prize winning book.
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LibraryThing member chitatel
an incredible and detailed account of only one of the many tragedies endured by the soviet people in the 20th century. this book is not merely a description of the system, but a portal to further exploration of the unimaginable horrors. it introduced me to the beautiful and tragic writings of
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varlam shalamov and evgenia ginzburg.
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LibraryThing member danbarrett
Gulags are super-intense. I'm pretty sure we can all agree on that. A very interesting look into the whole Soviet concentraion camp machine. Very readable, and very adept at making one realize that absolute barbarism of this era in Russian history (one consistently and strangely glossed over in
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modern times, as Applebaum points out).
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LibraryThing member kranbollin
A nice complement to the work of Solzhenitsyn, who is arguably the angriest man on the planet. Having spent decades in the Gulag, he writes 'The grass grows green over the grave of my youth.' Both authors should be read to get a comprehensive view of this atrocity. Applebaum supplies many details
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about the operation of the system that were not available to Solzhenitsyn when he wrote his work, drawing on more recent sources.
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
I have read a fair amount of material on Stalinism and the camps, including all three volumes of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, but this is particularly useful in being one of the very few post-Soviet works on this subject I have read. Of neccessity very harrowing at times, it is also
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comprehensive in its coverage from a variety of different angles.

I find some of the other comments posted here a bit baffling - she doesn't ignore WWII or the Tsarist prison system, though obviously they are not covered fully, as that is not the purpose of this book.
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LibraryThing member ablueidol
In depth and harrowing account of the use of prison camps and their essentially political function as both a form of control and of economic development as slave labour. (although how effective this was is open to question as many of the big projects were for political status rather then economic
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benefit) They also reflect the dehumanising ideals that individuals were redeemed by work. One of the benefits/truths(?)of a religion that demonstrate the true spirit of God is one that respects differences, promotes dignity and can see that of God even in the like of Hitler or Stalin- condemn the sin not the sinner to use Judaic-Christian language.
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LibraryThing member PaulFAustin
Applebaum's history of the Gulag is encyclopedic and for that reason is exhausting to read. She shows the evolution of the institution from a (by later standards, gentle) prison for politicals who offered competition to the Bolsheviki, through a slave labor system for building actual Socialism,
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through a stage where the Gulag played a key role in the terror campaign against all elements of the Soviet population before subsiding once more into a slave labor system, this time for the unfortunates caught up in the Great Patriotic War.

Applebaum then explores step by step the elements of the Gulag from arrest orders through interrogation, "trial", transport and emprisonment. In this section she clearly shows how a regime that places no value on human lives as anything beyond units of labor debases all it touches.
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LibraryThing member Misoman
I believe Applebaum really tried in her search of the truth about the Gulag, the famous, or rather infamous labor camp infrastructure of communist Russia. I enjoyed this book despite its morbid subject and thought it was a good piece of scholarly work. I do have a bias toward Solgen Nietzschen's 2
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volume rendition, seeing as how he is a brilliant writer and was actually a prisoner of the Gulag. Bottom-line: This is a great book and would be a great companion to Solgen Nietzschen's 2 volume Gulag.

Miso
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LibraryThing member untraveller
Good, reasonably readable, and interesting. The main drawback is the same as in other books I read....include better maps. I am no Russian expert and place names requiring me to go to the internet irritate me. Better maps are necessary or do not include the geographic data (which in this case would
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negate the book).
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LibraryThing member shawnd
This is a piece of research non-fiction about the history of Soviet work camps from origin to final. It is completely comprehensive. And long. I was impressed that the author could keep me focused and interested for the entire 700+ pages. It covers the economics of the camps, crime and black
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markets, security, personality and history of the victims, and evolution of placement, purpose, and most of all the reality of camp life. The book would seem a life's work by the author it is so exhaustively researched. Once read you'll never have to touch this topic again.
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LibraryThing member pouleroulante
closely-typed pages detailing injustices and misery decade after decade.
She, and Eddie Izzard, have wondered why Stalin/Soviet memorabilia isnt reviled the way Nazi symbols are. This book is full of horrendous detail of ideology gone mad.
5 stars but not an easy read...
LibraryThing member kcshankd
Mesmerizing, does a great job laying out the actual numbers behind the camps. I was struck by the parallels between the destruction of the zeks families, compared to the American prison complex. As more and more police misconduct comes to light, the more delusional the contrast between the two
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systems.
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LibraryThing member labfs39
I can’t say enough good things about this book. Anne Applebaum has taken advantage of recent archive openings in Russia and conducted thorough and detailed research of the newly available material. Her findings are changing the way people think about the Soviet Gulag system. In the past, most
Show More
historians had to rely on survivor memoirs and the classic history, The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn for their information. I think this caused a bias toward the point of view and experience of dissident writers. Applebaum’s use of newly opened archives allows her to uncover the government’s agenda, statistics, and methods; as well as prisoner records, including those of criminals, non-political prisoners, and collaborators who were less likely to share their stories. The result is a new perspective, one that Applebaum thoughtfully and articulately explores.

The first and last sections are chronological in structure, but in the middle section, Applebaum chose to break her material into topics, such as punishment and reward, guards, and women and children. These sections are particularly descriptive and evocative of life in the camps. In addition, I found her comparison of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet labor camps concise and convincing. Her explication of the Gulag as a deliberate and organized economic system was eye-opening: the extent to which the Soviets were willing to go to create and maintain such a system, even in the face of obvious losses, was shocking. I also learned how erroneous I was in my preconception that the Gulag was populated primarily by political prisoners.

Although I found the introduction to sound a bit like a graduate student’s paper, the rest of the book was engrossing and highly readable. I only wish there had been more photos, especially of some of the Central Asian camps. In any case, I highly recommend this Pulitzer Prize winning book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Shrike58
While this book is probably as good a general study as you could wish of what the Gulag system represented in Soviet society, and what it was like to be caught in the wheels of the system as both a prisoner and a functionary, Applebaum somewhat undercuts her achievement with a polemical edge that
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is more appropriate to an editorial essay than a work of history. Are there really that many individuals out there who are in denial of the gulag that need their noses rubbed in it? And as for the question of what it will take for Russian society to really come to grips with what the whole Gulag experience meant, and whether it just demonstrates that Stalinist Russia was simply "stupid, wasteful, and tragic" one might also note the number of people still in denial about what racism has meant to the United States. The hunt for a "useable history" never ends.
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LibraryThing member Miro
The book is based on first hand accounts of the Gulag (notably Shalamov) and effectively shows the horror of the camps as do other authors such as Solzhenitsyn, Klevniuk, Sgovio, Herman or Tzouliadis.

The problem is that Applebaum systematically blanks out the central Jewish role in Bolshevism from
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the October 1917 revolution through the establishment of the Gulag, the Ukrainian death/famine of 1932/33 until 1937 when Stalin turned on his Jewish collaborators. At this point they did in fact become victims but this is deceptively presented as their whole part in the story.

The interested reader can paste back in what the author has cut out:

- The October 1917 Bolshevik coup was launched against the Provisional Government and destroyed the Constitutional Convention that was preparing the way for a Russian democracy. The many contemporary accounts wrote of the indiscriminate violence and the identity of the Bolsheviks, e.g. American ambassador David Francis, "The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution" (see David R. Francis', "Russia from the American Embassy, April, 1916-November, 1918 [1921]").

- Dozens of first hand accounts delivered to the British government told the same story ( Google: “a collection of reports on bolshevism in Russia pdf “) as did the London Times correspondent Robert Wilton (see his book, “The Last Days of the Romanovs”). They were correct in that 83% of the 12 member Bolshevik Central Committee was Jewish as was 70% of the 115 member Bolshevik government (Central Committee, Council of People's Commissars, Central Executive Committee and Extraordinary Commission) with the top leadership being exclusively Jewish if you count Lenin: i.e. Vladimir Ulyanov, Lev Bronstein, Ovsei-Gershon Apfelbaum and Lev Rozenfeld (a.k.a. Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev).

- The Bolsheviks from the start declared that anti-Semitism was punishable by death while they showed extreme violence against any opponents, especially other socialists and communists. Lenin declared that the French revolutionary Terror had failed through lack of intensity and instructed his Jewish terrorists to not repeat the same mistake. He also raised Stalin to the Central Committee for his obvious intelligence and undoubted capacity for easy violence and deception (see Robert Service's excellent “Stalin, A Biography”).

- The organized Gulag that appeared in 1928 with the White Sea-Baltic canal project followed the same lines with unbelievable conditions far worse than slavery (slaves generally had value, were fed, clothed and didn't die within months) with an all Jewish management: Lazar Kogan (Head of Gulag and Chief of Construction 1930-32), Matvei Berman (Deputy Head of Gulag to 1931 and Head from 1932), Seymon Firin (Assistant to Deputy Head of the Gulag 1932 and Deputy Head from 1933), Yakov Rapoport (Deputy Chief of Construction from 1931), Naftaly Frenkel (Assistant Head of Canal Construction) and Genrik Yagoda (Deputy Head of OGPU (NKVD) secret police from 1924 and later Head until 1936). All of them received the Order of Lenin (apart from Firin) as Soviet Heroes.

- This same group of Jews went on to head the Gulag as it rapidly spread throughout Soviet Russia (“metastasized” is the word used by Solzhenitsyn) while at the same time Russia witnessed a new Jewish “revolutionary” bourgeoisie amply described by Slezkine in his book, “The Jewish Century” as they enjoyed elite educational academies, worshiped Pushkin and visited their country dachas (the inspiration behind George Orwell's book, "Animal Farm" ). None of this in “Gulag – A History”.

- Equally the book gives three paragraphs to the Ukrainian death-famine (Holodomor) of 1932-33 in which 6-7 million Ukrainians died (at least 30% of them children). By June 1933 it is estimated that 30.000 people were dying every day while Jewish Politiburo member Lazar Kaganovich meticulously organized the removal of all foodstuff from the country with his commissars killing wild animals, setting up watchtowers and sending out inspection teams with any hoarding punishable by death.

This reviewer has the feeling that if 7 million Jews had been starved to death by Ukrainians, Applebaum would have given events more that three paragraphs, not to say that that a whole industry would have been built around it.

Its reasonable to ask why the author wrote the book. The Western media and academia have been happy to ignore the subject for 50 years so why is the Gulag suddenly “rediscovered” with such fanfare?

Applebaum says that, “Until now, the social, cultural and political framework for knowledge of the Gulag has not been in place”.

An alternative explanation could be that in the present Age of Open Information (and despite the best efforts of the Western media), there has been a growing awareness of the identities of Jewish Bolshevik mass murderers such as Yagoda, Frenkel and Kaganovich - hence the need for a new “definitive” goodthinkers account that puts the story straight.

A particularly questionable part of this effort are the sly backhanded attacks on Solzhenitsyn throughout the text. Apparently his crime was to have told the told the truth about the central Jewish core of Bolshevism.
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LibraryThing member csayban
From a historical perspective, Gulag is an in-depth treatise on the creation, evolution and eventual dismantling of the immense Soviet concentration camps that became known as the Gulag. Far from a set system, the Gulag evolved with the changing needs of the Soviet Union – or the changing moods
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of Stalin – resulting in dramatic differences from era to era, or even camp to camp. Anne Applebaum writes a detailed accounting of the entire Gulag system from beginning to end. A commendable work of scholarship, Gulag misses no detail. However, it does fail to make an emotional connection to the prisoners who lived and often died in a system that didn’t make sense, even to its creators. Instead, it reads like a ledger, cataloging the arrests, camps, deaths and incidents without ever really letting us inside the lives of the people who brought about a concentration camp system that lasted for half a century. Gulag provides an understanding of a system that dominated Soviet Russia, but much like the Soviet system itself, it does lack any humanity.
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LibraryThing member lharris4
Very well-written and gripping account of the USSR's infamous prison system. Lacks excuses and ideological attacks, unlike too many histories of the Soviet Union.
LibraryThing member Garrison0550
I'm amazed when I think of what it must have taken to pull all of this material together in such a long and comprehensive book. And it is long, so some level of patience will probably be required to get through it, but it is certainly worth doing if Russian history, particularly the dark side of
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it, interests you.
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LibraryThing member hmib
A powerful and important book.
LibraryThing member santhony
I ordered this book at the same time as the author’s Red Famine, a look at Stalin’s largely manufactured famine centered in the Ukraine. I didn’t much enjoy Red Famine and wasn’t holding out much hope for this work. The author’s writing style in Red Famine was not reader friendly and I
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found it a chore to get through. However, for some reason, I tolerated this work much better. Perhaps it was the subject matter, which seemed to allow for more interesting reading.

As the title suggests, this work deals with the history of the Soviet gulag system of penal camps and relocation centers from the 1920s to their discontinuance in the 1950s. Unlike Red Famine, this book contains numerous personal stories and observations by those that survived the camps. As a result, it was easier to read and far more captivating than Red Famine. I can recommend this work for anyone interested in the subject matter, or Soviet history in general.
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LibraryThing member Steve_Walker
Excellent! Very well written book on a topic and time that needs to be discussed. It is also, at times, a painful book to read. It staggers the imagination to see the evil that mankind inflicts on itself.
LibraryThing member reader1009
nonfiction (history of soviet gulags). takes into account recently surfaced documents providing a more complete story of the prison camps than has been told before.
LibraryThing member japaul22
Another big thank you due to my fellow LTers who recommended this book. There are many excellent reviews that detail the content of this book, so I'm planning to just point out a few things I learned and the things that surprised me most.

First of all, the reaction I got from friends and coworkers
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as I carried this book along was interesting. I got two main reactions - either a joke about being "sent to the Gulag" or "sent to Siberia" or "what's a gulag?".

Well. People don't joke about Nazi concentration camps and everybody knows about them. The Gulag involved millions of people, millions died (though there weren't systematic mass murders), millions were forcibly removed from their homes and condemned to certain death in remote locations and yet many people know nothing about this. Even Russians don't want to talk about it.

To be fair, I personally knew very little about the Gulag. I learned that so-called political prisoners were lumped into prisons with actual criminals. I learned that the camps were tasked with jobs that were impossible to complete and also tasked with major projects that were no use to anyone, like hundreds of miles of roads and railroads that were never used. I learned that most of the political prisoners weren't really very political at all ( not like they were out protesting Stalin or something). And that those arrested weren't just one ethnicity, religion, or economic class - they really crossed all sections of the Soviet Union. I also learned that there were many, many people outside the Gulag who were exiled but aren't counted as technically part of the Gulag.

Basically, almost everything I read in this book was news to me and I'm very much looking forward to Applebaum's next book.
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LibraryThing member tiaoconnor
The audiobook is a disaster. The reader literally struggles with the pronunciation. The Russian words and proper names are grossly mispronounced to the point of being unrecognizable, while the accents are routinely misplaced.
I have mixed feelings about the book itself and, all in all, it simply
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feels that it is not the work of a professional historian, it lacks balance.
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Awards

National Book Award (Finalist — Nonfiction — 2003)
Pulitzer Prize (Winner — General Non-Fiction — 2004)
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — History — 2003)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — General Nonfiction — 2003)

Language

Original publication date

2003

Physical description

xiv, 610 p.; 24 cm

ISBN

9780140283105

Barcode

91100000176840

DDC/MDS

365.45094709041
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