 |
 |
   |
|
|
|
|
Gulag: A History Of The Soviet CampsEditions
Review
The book is divided into three parts: the outer sections are effectively a chronological history of the camps and their development, zenith and demise; the middle section addresses individual aspects of the camps – arrest, transportation, guards, children etc. Don’t be put off reading the book because you think it will be depressing – of course, some of it is difficult reading – but there are also stories of friendship, support and even of love – and of survival, too. When I had finished reading, I went back to a novel of camp life I had read as a schoolboy – One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich In one way – namely because the Soviet Union lasted such an unnaturally long time – it’s very easy to understand why this should be the first serious general history of the Gulag: many of the relevant archives have only recently been opened. But there is too an almost political explanation of why there has generally been less interest in this terrible episode of the twentieth century: many people seem to feel that examining the horrors of Stalinism is beside the point, when the more familiar horrors of the Holocaust already have the status of a uniquely evil event in our history. Anne Applebaum carefully dismisses the above argument in her introduction (the comparison with the Nazis was one, she said, at a lecture I attended, she didn’t want to make – but her publishers insisted because they felt all the book’s reviewers would make that same comparison anyway), by saying that one evil is by no means diminished just because of the existence of a separate evil, with different causes and different consequences. The fact that both Hitler and Stalin were in power at the same time only makes it more important for us to take account of our past, and Anne Applebaum’s intelligent analysis of the causes and effects of the Gulag is a superb contribution to our understanding. I am sure this will be a standard work on the subject for many years to come. - review by Dan Fenton |
|
John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
This is one of the best examples I have read of a book where the author has extracted from her extensive research only what is necessary to her narrative. Anne Applebaum has clearly spoken to every survivor of the Gulag, read every memoir, looked at every possible archive available to her (and some that weren’t available too), and yet the result is a terrifically clear and readable text - given the subject, I could hardly say ‘entertaining’, but I will say that I enjoyed the experience of reading this book precisely because it is so well written.
Fax:
020 7581 2084