We in the West have all heard of Hitler’s holocaust against the Jews. Many of us, however, know little of the holocaust against the people of the Soviet Union. Hitler’s holocaust came and went with his rise and fall; the population destruction in the Soviet Union lasted from 1919 until the closure of the Gulag work camps in 1960, a remarkable 41 years. Hitler’s holocaust is infamous in history and is taught in schools around the world. The story of the Soviet Union’s internal genocide is unknown to many who are not from the region.

The author of this book, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was a commander in the Red Army and saw action on the front lines against the Nazi’s in 1944. Despite his heroism, he was arrested in 1945 for writing negatively about Joseph Stalin to a friend in a private letter. He spent eight years in the Gulag work camps before being released, only to then be sentenced to internal exile in a remote part of southern Kazakhstan. It was there that he wrote much of The Gulag Archipelago, (this is just volume one of three) as he realized the importance of telling the world the horrors of what the Soviet Union had perpetrated against its own people. He was eventually expelled from the country for his writing by the KGB, finding his way to the United States and settling in Vermont.

This book, volume one, is a compilation of stories about the Soviet prison system compiled from a variety of sources including newspapers, letters, documents, personal diaries, things he remembered told to him from other prisoners, and his own personal experiences. It is a searing indictment of the entire Soviet complex, a harangue against communism as it was perpetrated by a government against its own citizens. The Soviet Union was a system built on lies, and our brave author believed that the world needed to know the destruction that such a system of lies perpetrates.

The reality of life in the Soviet Union in its early days was a feeling of perpetual uncertainty; nobody was safe. Anyone could be picked up and arrested at any time and for seemingly any reason. Many people were tortured into signing confessions of guilt (despite their obvious innocence) and given the most common prison sentence—a ‘tenner,’ meaning ten years. In the 1940’s, this often became quarters, or twenty-five years. The criminal code was in its infancy when Lenin came to power in 1918, but as Stalin ruled the country for nearly three decades, the code became more and more encompassing. Anyone who was even suspected of being a threat to power was grabbed off the street and thrown in a cell. Most were then promised a lighter sentence if they named others who had similarly ‘transgressed.’ Many did, and still found themselves beaten and starved anyways.

All of the traditional forms of torture were pursued, including physical beatings, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme heat and cold, the withholding of food and water, and degradations of all kinds. Many captives experienced being stuffed in an overcrowded cell, with so little room that one could not properly sit down and sleeping was done on top of one another. There is a chapter dedicated to the description of the transport trains, which often visited the same stations as free citizens did, perhaps stopping around the corner of the main platform so as to remain out of sight (and therefore out of mind). There is another chapter describing the almost limitless power of the Bluecaps—the Soviet secret police in charge of arrests and prosecutions.

Solzhenitsyn describes how he came to truly appreciate the people he was held captive with, for they provided stories, the only fruit in season for a human deprived of all else. He met many former military men like himself throughout his time in the jails and Gulags in addition to academics, artists, and people from all trades and walks of life. There were prisoners from other countries and cultures, all thrown into the meat grinder of a prison system, most destined never to escape. As depressing as many of their lives were, it was always exciting when a new prisoner was brought in, for that was the only way to learn about the events of the outside world.

What is most amazing to me is how much of this entire episode is hidden under the heavy dust of history. The Gulag camps were officially closed in 1960, which is only 63 years ago. How shamefully recent! It is both a testament to Soviet secrecy and our own 21st century blind spots that so many people are unaware of the true horror and atrocity of the Soviet genocide. We have only a select few resources to look to for education on the subject, and we owe our courageous author eternal gratitude for bringing such important history to light through his writing.