Gulag : A History
by ANNE APPLEBAUM
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Book Summary Information
Author: ANNE APPLEBAUMEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2004-04-09
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 736
Publisher: anchor
Book Reviews of Gulag : A History
Book Review: Timely overview
Summary: 5 Stars
I liked Applebaum's book, first of all, for clearly systematizing the vast GULAG - related materials available to date. And even though the book is emotionally difficult to read, the clarity of Applebaum's style and her obvious empathy with the material help along. In addition, I have always especially valued authors' own response to the subjects of their books, which is rather rare in non-fiction. Refreshingly, in the introduction and the last few chapters, Applebaum offers her own take on issues ranging from the number of GULAG prisoners to the unfortunate lack of awareness about GULAG today.
But no less important, and unfortunately not sufficiently explored in this clever and factual book, is a consideration of the human condition, aided perhaps by historic and cultural circumstance, that led to the mushrooming of this vast and atrocious system. Applebaum starts tackling the issue by suggesting that the main reason behind GULAG's existence was economic benefit. Stalin believed in slave labor. The country had vast natural resources in the climatically harsh remote regions, that it vitally needed for rapid economic growth. Hence the system of concentration camps that delivered both. This convincing explanation seems, however, incomplete. It does not account for the guard that would not let literally dying of thirst prisoners collect rainwater into their mugs, nor for the commissars working day and night wringing confessions in non-existing crimes from hundreds of thousands of innocent people, nor does it account for the repression of the families of those labeled "enemies of the people". Applebaum admits that many such workings of the Soviet State are hard to understand.
The fish rots from the head. Undoubtedly, Stalin himself was the engine of much atrocity. His values are well represented by his 1937 messages to local NKVD in which he specified the percentages of each province population he wanted dead. Stalin's monstrous bent on mass murder may be a part of his character with which he was born. Or he may have developed it as overcompensation for his physical shortcomings and lack of talents. But it seems that this unrestrained evil blossomed because of the policies of the Russian State at the time. These policies appear to be the main building blocks of GULAG.
The sprawling GULAG system, with thousands of camps and some 18 million people that passed through it, could not have existed if it were not an inherent part of the State. The system of Russian concentration camps was started before Stalin got to the helm (with over 100 camps in 1920, when Lenin was alive and well), and operated well after Stalin's death (until 1986). Soviet Russia defined itself as the product of class struggle. The idea of history as class struggle, proposed by Marx, became the country's new religion. Moreover, not only was this theory used to explain history, but the country's new history was made according to this theory: class struggle had to be created and perpetuated to prove the wisdom of the dogma. Marx and Lenin laid the groundwork for this process by claiming that vast groups of people had to be declared enemies of the workers and peasants according to the new sociological law they uncovered. The new Soviet State was quite imaginative in choosing the subsections of the population to declare enemies: relatively better-off peasants, foreigners, minorities, people who were late for work etc. When they ran out of obvious choices, they just invented numerous "plots" and "spy networks" and tortured false confessions out of innocent people (acting on the State doctrine that confession trumps all evidence and on Stalin's 1937 memo approving torture). Dealing with individuals that were unpleasant to the state was disarmingly simple: it was sufficient to label someone as part of an "enemy" group. Then the conviction followed automatically based on the state dogma. Declaring a group to be hostile to the Soviet social order and an individual to be part of that group was at the heart of the Soviet State and followed directly from the cornerstone of Marxism.
GULAG could not have existed without the spirit of intolerance to "others", fanned by the Party rhetoric. Lenin, rabidly intolerant of any disagreement with his own views, openly called for being ruthless to the enemies of Bolsheviks. He believed in terror. Robespierre was his hero and NKVD was his guillotine. Intolerance and ruthlessness were at the heart of GULAG's development into the system of slave labor and death, and formed the basis for the repression of the inmates' families.
GULAG could not have existed without great indifference to human suffering and disregard for human life on the part of authorities. Perhaps, in part it was a natural occurrence in the society that operated in larger than life slogans ("The Party and People are One") and in which individual was always secondary to the plans of "the Party and the State". The country's ideals were inanimate notions (such as "Socialist Labor" or "Bright Future") An individual life was never one of them.
GULAG could not have existed in a country with any semblance of a legal system. Until 1922, the new Soviet Russia did not even have a Criminal Code. And in 1937, the chief law officer of the USSR, Vyshinsky, argued that prosecutors should not feel limited by the letter of law, or even by their intellect, but should use their "party intuition" to detect the enemy. Usually, there were no investigations or hearings. Until 1938, the person was sentenced by a "troika" (which was presided by the chief of the local NKVD), without as much as pretence of a due process.
GULAG could not have existed without collaboration of tens of thousands of people. Propaganda played a big role in recruiting them. Bolsheviks knew the value of propaganda. One of the main reasons that they got to power in 1917 was their use of propaganda to cajole Russian solders to join them. Their high regard for propaganda led them to outlaw all opposition press only two days after they succeeded in the military coup. The new Soviet State gave the world dictionaries the word "agitprop" and with it the idea of the propaganda party offices throughout the country. In addition, GULAG's administration and support personnel were not trained in critical thinking: for example, in 1945 75% of them had no education beyond primary school. They presented a greenfield material for the State propaganda.
The book does not have the immediacy of the first-hand experience or the liveliness of GULAG Archipelago, but is an engaging and systematic overview of what we know about GULAG today.
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