It has taken me quite a while to read this – and this is just the abridged version. This is one of those books that I have been intending to read for years and, in many ways, I now wish that I had gotten round to reading it sooner.
I had previously read One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich as my first introduction to the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – however the Gulag is just as powerful as its reputation suggests. The accounts – not only of life in the camps, but also of the way on which people were rounded up; interrogated; transported; and generally abused by the Soviet ‘system’ – are written without sensationalism – but they hit home. They also make you realise how lucky we are to live in a society that is very different from that described in the book.
I guess that fundamentally it is a book about the abuse of power – and it is certain that this sort of thing happened in many other cultures – although perhaps not on the scale of what occurred in the USSR in the middle of the 20th century. Indeed – for a country that was supposedly espousing communism – everyone is equal – the description of what was essentially the creation of a quite extreme class-filled society is really eye opening.
This will not be everyone’s cup of tea – it is far from an easy read – and so will perhaps never be read by as many people as ought to do so – and – of course – the nature of the book means that those who most need to learn its lessons are precisely those people who are most likely to completely ignore the book. For me though definitely a recommended read.