- Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers; Reprint edition (Jan 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060007761
- ISBN-13: 978-0060007768
- Product Dimensions: 20.5 x 13.7 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
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- #24 in Books > Biography > Political > Countries & Regions > Russia
- #31 in Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Countries & Regions > Europe
- #34 in Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Russia
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
"Its importance can hardly be exaggerated," said Doris Lessing. "It helped to bring down an empire." For those who doubt that literature can change the world, here is evidence to the contrary. Solzhenitsyn's scorching, brilliant, part-autobiographical expose of the dreary oppressiveness and institutionalised cruelty of the Soviet regime, really did contribute to the final collapse of the Union in 1989. It also exposed how, if Hitler had the deaths of well over 6 million on his hands, the figure for Stalin might be nearer 60 million. This is not only history-in-the-making, but also an absolutely compulsive read (especially in this 400-page version abridged from the 1800 pages of the three-volume original.) From the breathtaking opening page, when Solzhenitsyn depicts starving prisoners of the Kolyma gulags, discovering a deep-frozen, prehistoric salamander in an icy stream and devouring it on the spot, "with relish," he holds you rapt, like the Ancient Mariner, with his "skinny hand" and "glittering eye." You have no choice but to listen to him, especially when he derides those who say "It would not happen here". "Alas," he says, "all the evil of the 20th century is possible everywhere on earth." One of the very few undeniable books of the century. --Christopher Hart
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis
Solzhenitsyn draws upon his own life in labor camps as well as the experience of fellow prisoners and extensive research to document the workings of the Soviet secret police and prison system.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
66 of 68 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is unquestionably the best non fiction book I have ever read. It is at once profound, intelligent, affecting, exquisitely readable (excepting some of the more factual chapters, perhaps), terrifying, uplifting and occaionally - unexpectedly - very humourous. Solzhenitsyn manages to convey the details of the most outrageous atrocities without ever losing a sense of what is good about the human race and without ever losing an acutely righteous anger about what is bad about it.
Personally I have spent the last two months since reading this book all but beating everyone I know into reading it; some books, after all, should be reccomended highly, but this book should be mandatory, a rite of passage for anyone who has any opinion on history or morality - hell, for anyone who has the ability to read.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is a marvel to flip through this book again, though the abridged version is nothing compared to the original 3-volume trilogy. Though it is very difficult to get into - in the original v1 there is a long abstract section on gulags as a sewage system in turbid prose - once the reader gets swept into thos narrative of suffering there is no other reading experience like it.
Solzhenitsyn spent his youth as a gulag prisoner for having criticized Stalin on a postcard. V1 covers his arrest and interrogation and transport into despair and disillusionment. What he experienced, from his start as a strong and idealistic young war leader, can only be described as hell on earth. Only Hitler's death factories could compare, and yet Stalin's slave labor camps were being held up as marvels of social policy and redemption. The cruelty of treatment, the insights into the astonishing characters around him, and the compilation of other people's stories - Solzhenitsyn describes his experience as only one gulp from an ocean of bitterness and shattered lives - are unequalled in the modern literature on totalitarianism. My experience was to be utterly transported into this realm, to look at my life and values and think about what mattered most to develop within myself. No other book ever had a deeper impact on me. That makes this, in my opinion, essential reading to understand the last century at its very very worst.
The second volume follows Solzhenitsyn as he becomes a hardened and grief-stricken prison slave, indifferent to whether he is killed by a stray bullet during riots and abandoning his faith in communism. A central pert of the book is his religious conversion - the only one I ever read about that I truly understood on an emotional level - at the deathbed of perhaps his greatest freind. V3 covers his relesase from prison and his attempts to rebuild his life.
All three volumes offered to me the experience of living totally outside of myself and in the reality of a totalitarian state. I first read these in EUrope when they appeared, and the debates on the merits of the communist sytem were very much alive at the time. Now they are only of historical interest, but I still think they are must reading for anyone who wants to understand the worst of one of the most tumultuous centuries in the history of mankind.
Highest recommendation.
Solzhenitsyn spent his youth as a gulag prisoner for having criticized Stalin on a postcard. V1 covers his arrest and interrogation and transport into despair and disillusionment. What he experienced, from his start as a strong and idealistic young war leader, can only be described as hell on earth. Only Hitler's death factories could compare, and yet Stalin's slave labor camps were being held up as marvels of social policy and redemption. The cruelty of treatment, the insights into the astonishing characters around him, and the compilation of other people's stories - Solzhenitsyn describes his experience as only one gulp from an ocean of bitterness and shattered lives - are unequalled in the modern literature on totalitarianism. My experience was to be utterly transported into this realm, to look at my life and values and think about what mattered most to develop within myself. No other book ever had a deeper impact on me. That makes this, in my opinion, essential reading to understand the last century at its very very worst.
The second volume follows Solzhenitsyn as he becomes a hardened and grief-stricken prison slave, indifferent to whether he is killed by a stray bullet during riots and abandoning his faith in communism. A central pert of the book is his religious conversion - the only one I ever read about that I truly understood on an emotional level - at the deathbed of perhaps his greatest freind. V3 covers his relesase from prison and his attempts to rebuild his life.
All three volumes offered to me the experience of living totally outside of myself and in the reality of a totalitarian state. I first read these in EUrope when they appeared, and the debates on the merits of the communist sytem were very much alive at the time. Now they are only of historical interest, but I still think they are must reading for anyone who wants to understand the worst of one of the most tumultuous centuries in the history of mankind.
Highest recommendation.
33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Recently i went into a large and well known bookstore in Glasgow because I wanted to buy this truly great book as a gift. The store was overrun by children and their parents who were buying the "new Harry Potter" When I asked an assisstant to find out if I could still buy this book in the original three volume edition she was unable to tell me. She had heard neither of The Gulag nor of Solzhenitsyn. She had to leave our conversation here as she had more Harry Potters' to attend to. Somehow this difficulty acted as a spur and made me more determined than ever to find the three volume set as a gift for my friend.... This truly great and historic book should be required reading. It is a matter of National Importance tha works like this are always available in print and always there when required. Totalatarianism has not gone away. It has changed it's clothes, hired some PR and now wears a little tasteful jewellery but it is still with us, still very much alive. The weight of Solzhenitsyns' experience and his extraordinary ability to wite seriously, in a way that is now qite uncommon in the west, makes these volumes vital literature and a compelling vision of a past coming to life again in Central Europe and elsewhere. One of the truly great artistic achievements of the 20th Century and one of the most powerful episodes of defiance and courage in the face of terror you will ever read. `it's true greatness, however, might lie in it's warmth and it's love for fellow prisoners. An essential life affirming testament to courage and decency.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Overrated
Now I know that this book is a classic and that everyone else who has reviewed this thinks it's incredible, but I really have to disagree with them. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Londoner 333
Solzhenitsyn - Great Russian Hero
I had always imagined Solzhenitsyn as some kind of fiery Biblical prophet, full of righteousness and rhetoric, hurling verbal thunderbolts at his enemies and damning them to... Read more
Published 5 months ago by John Fitzpatrick
Gulag Archipelago Vol 3
I would recommend anyone who has read the first two volumes to obtain and read the 3rd Volume.
After so much written in the first two volumes this work still adds insight and... Read more
After so much written in the first two volumes this work still adds insight and... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Lighthouse
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
While Solzhenitsyn has been heavily criticised in recent decades, for a number of sound reasons, The Gulag Archipelago is a classic in a Russian tradition, known for it's... Read more
Published on 30 May 2010 by J. Southworth
The message is in the questions you ask of yourself
I can't really do this book justice, I'd love to spend hours pouring over it, but I think I'd be serving myself more than Alexander's. Read more
Published on 28 Oct 2009 by M. J. LUDGATE
One of the must reads of the Soviet Era
This is a Monumental work by a Monumental Writer. With a Surgeons meticulousness of dissection, Solzhenitsyn lays bare the entire anatomy of the Oppressive apparatus, laying bare... Read more
Published on 29 Sep 2009 by Spilsbury
deep pain of a proud people
Compulsive reading. Jaw droppingly raw and at the same time tender as mankind is reduced by arbitrary morality. Read more
Published on 25 Sep 2009 by J. Truesdale
Everyone should read this
Sometimes horrible, sometimes funny, mostly just unbelievable that a nation could plunge to such depths. Sadly it has to be believed. Read more
Published on 22 Aug 2008 by Malcolm
Monumental Account of Institutionalised Inhumanity
One of the most monumental accounts of one of the cruellest ideologies of history,this book should be read by all
Layer by layer Solzhenitsyn exposes the hideous system of... Read more
Layer by layer Solzhenitsyn exposes the hideous system of... Read more
Published on 17 Jun 2008 by Gary Selikow
One of the first glimpses into Stalin's nightmare universe.
This circulated in samizdat form for a few years,until a reader,after being arrested with a copy,committed suicide.Solzhenitsyn then sent the manuscript to the West. Read more
Published on 1 April 2008 by PygmyTwylyte
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