The Gulag Archipelago

it's hilarious.

- Stalin gives a speech, everyone applauds, nobody wants to be the first to stop clapping. they all clap for several hours.

- Secret police turn up to arrest a suspect. he's not home, so they arrest his innocent next door neighbor, a woman, and send her to the gulags.

i laughed and laughed.

as for accuracy, who can say? it's more credible than any of the shit Supreme Commander Orange Cheeto comes out with.

>>9289348
DRUMPF BTFO

>>9289346
Pretty horrific man

>>9289333
Reading it atm, he got many of his stats wrong but openly admits it.

>>9289333
>How accurate is it?
It is precisely 63.44% accurate.

I starter reading Dostojevskij because i thought he spend time in gulag but it turns out it was some other Russian author

>>9289428
You overdid it with your irony and your post became a parody of itself. Feelsbadman.
>>9289780
Lol

Ivan Denisovich is better

>>9289346
this is pretty much russian humor

>>9289348
HOW CAN DRUMPFTARDS EVER RECOVER FROM THIS?

>>9289780
He was sent to Siberia in a work camp. It was a penal colony.

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>>9289333
"Yet Another Red Scare Book, vol. 75"

>>9290587
You don't realize how retarded you look to people who were or whos parents were citizens in the soviet union

>>9290679
> citizens in the soviet union
*Balts and Hohols

>>9289348
holy... i want more

>>9289346
I agree, it is alongside being extremely moving in many other ways, extremely funny. Solzenytsin is unironically the funniest author I ever read, without even trying to be funny half the time.

>>9289333
i've read it twice. it's really fucking bleak - almost disturbing how nonchalantly he describes the most horrific scenes.
definitely worth reading for its historical merit, or if you just want to be reminded how evil people can be.

>>9291838
Is it comparable to Ce questo un huomo or whatever thats called, by Primo Levi? I liked that one, read it three times

>>9291838
Did you read abridged without the real nice Orthodox existentialism? Because he really doesn't focus only on the bad things.

>>9291841
You mean Se questo è un uomo. It's hard to compare the two. Levi's book is ~250 pages (IIRC, it's been a while), Solzhenitsyn's trilogy clocks in at about 1800. The scope is wildly different. And as another anon said, Alexander Isayevitch is genuinely hilarious at times. Levi isn't, or not as often.
They do share the urge to document a horrific system, lest we forget. Try reading a chapter -- any chapter, really -- and see whether you like it.

>>9291959
I will do that sir, thank you

>>9291984
That's allright my good sir, tally ho! I say, when does the narwhal bacon?

>>9289333
It was a frightening look into the realities of communism.

>>9289333
I liked it and im a marxist

>>9290587
Slozhenitsyn doesn't really turn it ideological, he's obviously very critical of the totalitarian regime he suffered under but I don't remember him ever really condemning socialism as an idea. As I recall he was actually quite critical of the excesses of western capitalism.

>>9289333

It's good but it's not a great work. His great work is In The First Circle

>>9292495
It's actually funny how quickly he was dropped by the Western liberal intelligentsia after he criticized it in his speech at Harvard. He basically called them out that their support for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War was partially responsible for all the deaths after the conquest of South Vietnam, and they weren't conforted by it.

>>9292495
He was an ultramonarchist and wanted to reestablish the tsarist totalitarian regime, which is why he was against both socialism and capitalism.

>>9290679
You are the only one looking retarded here.

>>9290587
>>9292684
The first of Solzhenitsyn's books to be allowed publication in the soviet union was one about the gulags. This issue isn't factually controversial in the slightest. Fucking retards.

>>9292662
He was a Plato kind of guy.

>>9292662
He also loved Putin in his last years after returning to Russia. Eddie Limonov wrote some funny stuff about what a loser Solzhenitsyn was after leaving the USA, even if it was barely accurate.

>>9292662
The tsarist government was never totalitarian because the state apparatus was not even close to the one you would have to have for one.
It didn't actually predate the birth of totalitarian regimes.

>>9289333
Spring break! Hahahhahaha!

>>9292662
Tsars were totalitarian?

>>9289387
give him some credit. he did the best he could in a nation where official lying wasn't just endemic, it was party policy.

"Even when Soviet factories produced something useful or necessary, central planning bunged it up. The government in Moscow would send commands called gross-output targets to all manufacturing facilities. The gross-output target told the factory manager what to make and how much of it. Anyone who has dealt with bureaucrats who are accountable only to other bureaucrats knows what happened next.

The trouble wasn’t that the factory managers disobeyed orders. The trouble was that they obeyed them precisely. If a shoe factory was told to produce 1,000 shoes, it produced 1,000 baby shoes, because these were the cheapest and easiest to make. If it was told to produce 1,000 men’s shoes, it made them all one size. If it was told to produce 1,000 shoes in a variety for men, women, and children, it produced 998 baby shoes, one pump, and a wing tip. If it was told to produce 3,000 pounds of shoes, it produced one enormous pair of concrete sneakers.

The factory managers weren’t doing this because they were evil or stupid. They did it because their livelihoods, their futures, and sometimes their necks were at stake. They didn’t have to satisfy customers. They didn’t have to please stockholders. What they had to do was meet the gross-output target, no matter what."
- P.J.O'Rourke, "Eat The Rich"

>>9290587
"Red Scare" was when the American government tried to make the Russians look like a credible threat. Solzhenitsyn makes them look like the ineffective clowns they really were.

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>>9293344
>If it was told to produce 3,000 pounds of shoes, it produced one enormous pair of concrete sneakers.

>>9293344
For sale: 1,000 baby shoes, never worn.

>>9293450
Don't you mean six million, goy? You're not an antisemite are you?

>>9289346
Would be funnier if so many westerners didn't believe it as fact

>>9293524
Why make posts like this? What do you gain?

>>9293542
It's called subversion kiddo, I am just spreading the redpill for the coming racewar

So, would I be missing out on a lot if I read the abridged edition? Or does the abridged edition faithfully capture the gulag experience?

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>>9293450
fucking kek

>>9290551

Isn't the gulag in siberia?

>>9289348
Is there a different color of Cheeto besides orange?

>>9293688
The keyword is archipelago. The gulag was a widespread system of camps that spread across the country, some in Siberia, most not.

>>9293532
Ex commie country citizen here.
I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve it.

>>9293441
you do know who P.J.O'Rourke is, don't you?

>>9293816
Unless you're like 100 years old your experience is irrelevant

When someone tells me they're a communist I immediately lose a bit of respect for them.

I do not see how anyone can justify totalitarianism for equality.

When you tell me that totalitarianism is not real communism I must ask how you will preserve your revolution without it? Fuck these people who think they can decide for the rest of us because they believe right.

>>9292458
Why are you still a marxist?

>>9293827
There are 100 year old people who I know who tell stories whose experience is then not irrelevant and comminism hasn't really ended since the power structures stayed in power.

ABRIDGED
B
R
I

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>>9293858
might makes right

>>9293858
Tbf most people I've met who are communists are just people who haven't achieved as much as they hoped to and want something/someone to blame.

>>9293964
Slavic people don't live to 100, shut up

>>9293858
On the contrary I get embarrassed when I hear people say things like this. Just the fact that there are people prancing around who take pride in their judgments and don't know that the vast majority of liberal history is fabrication.

Read the last chapter here 'Freedom in a Complex Society': http://inctpped.ie.ufrj.br/spiderweb/pdf_4/Great_Transformation.pdf

It's very shocking for people who think the world is obvious when they find out that they've been lied to. Usually they automatically reject anything that disagrees with how they see the world. Make note of this when you read.

Read Szymanski's Is the Red Flag Flying, and Human Rights in the Soviet Union to understand that the image presented to you about red totalitarianism is fiction. Also read Graeber's Debt since you're at an extremely low level of political consciousness. If you want to understand the relationship between states, classes and repression read Lenin's The State and Revolution.

None of this means you have to be a communist but at least don't be a stupid anti-communist.

>>9294004
>Who is everybody?

>>9294035
commies always playing the victim

>>9294052
Seeing as no one is playing the victim I'm going to have to ask what you're talking about.

>>9294061
dont play dumb now you

>>9294035

Please explain a little more how the Soviet Union wasn't a totalitarian regime.

>>9294035

You sound like the anti Yuri Bezmetov, his views but the diametric opposite

>>9293450
Sides: gone.

>>9294039
>What is projecting?

>>9294035
That sounds like replacing one form of propaganda for another.
Of course communist propaganda paints communism in a positive light.

>>9293524
*twelve million

>>9294035

What you linked refers not to revolutionary Marxism, but to a gradual movement away from the free market and towards a more centrally planned system. I do not dispute the necessity of this. If you had read my post (which was admittedly hyperbolic and a bit vitriolic, but hey, this is 4chan, that's the lingo) you would know that my issue is with the means of revolution, and the human cost thereof.

Try to be less of a condescending prick in future.

>>9294035
I get embarrassed when I read stuff like this. A movement predicated upon historical trends towards the Marxist historical endpoint should be more cognizant of history.

>>9289348
SAY IT WITH ME

MADAM

>Marx’s dark prophecy came no closer to being realized than Ricardo’s. In the last third of the nineteenth century, wages finally began to increase: the improvement in the purchasing power of workers spread everywhere, and this changed the situation radically, even if extreme inequalities persisted and in some respects continued to increase until World War I. The communist revolution did indeed take place, but in the most backward country in Europe, Russia, where the Industrial Revolution had scarcely begun, whereas the most advanced European countries explored other, social democratic avenues—fortunately for their citizens. Like his predecessors, Marx totally neglected the possibility of durable technological progress and steadily increasing productivity, which is a force that can to some extent serve as a counterweight to the process of accumulation and concentration of private capital. >He no doubt lacked the statistical data needed to refine his predictions. He probably suffered as well from having decided on his conclusions in 1848, before embarking on the research needed to justify them. Marx evidently wrote in great political fervor, which at times led him to issue hasty pronouncements from which it was difficult to escape. That is why economic theory needs to be rooted in historical sources that are as complete as possible, and in this respect Marx did not exploit all the possibilities available to him.8 What is more, he devoted little thought to the question of how a society in which private capital had been totally abolished would be organized politically and economically—a complex issue if ever there was one, as shown by the tragic totalitarian experiments undertaken in states where private capital was abolished.

-Piketty

Marxists BTFO

>>9294270

Source on that writing please.

>>>9289428
>You overdid it with your irony and your post became a parody of itself. >Feelsbadman.

You overdid it with your irony and your post became a parody of itself. Feelsbadman.

>>9289333
>How accurate is it?

It's fucking ridiculous and over the toppest of tops, only read nowadays to get a feeling of the hell that was the gulag.

Zemskov is the one you're looking for if you want accuracy.

>>9294487
You overdid it with your post and your irony became a parody of your man. Feels,Batman.

>>9289333
>muh anecdotes

>>9293858
Ideally under a communist government, counterrevolutionary thought should only preclude you from serving in government.

The problem with the USSR under Stalin, and eventually in the 80s, was that it failed to bring much of a benefit to the people it supported. Stalin's response to his government's failure was to use extreme brutality to scare people into submission.

>>9294035
>see someone misinterpeting what communism is about because of how historical leftist movements devolved in authoritarianism
>someone replies
>it's a fucking apologist sourcing "human rights in the ussr"

>>9294517

I do not want to live in a world where holding power requires you to hold a certain ideology.

In what world can you consider this in any way good?

>>9294558

You are the one who needs to grow up my one party system loving friend.
Maybe you can go to live in China.

>>9294574

Nonsense. Jeremy Corbyn is the fucking head of the British labour party. You can hold power, it just doesn't do you any good unless you're in the majority.

But hey, that's democracy.

>>9294527
If a communist government includes people actively trying to sabotage state efforts, lots of people will suffer.

>>9294614

If a communist government contains only communistic ideologues it may also end up making people suffer. Are you seriously arguing against the existence of opposition in government?

>>9294631
>>9294614

If you have only one party and idealogy that is allowed to hold power, then by nature the party makes the decision as to which idealogies can hold power, and who is allowed to be a part of the communistic government.

Under this logic the government can arbitrarily create an in group of people and leave power entirely impenetrable to everyone else. In what way will this not lead to the re-establishment of class?

>>9294631
Of course not, but a socialist government needs to be socialist. The US does this too. If a president is elected who desires to abolish the constitution, the US military has the legal right to depose him.

Certain ideals must be preserved.

>>9294638
The mass line and democratic elections prevent this. The problem with the USSR was that regular people were hugely alienated not only from their production, but also from their government.

>>9294654

I understand what you're saying in that you argue that the central ethos of the state should be protected, and that any state/regime will do so. However in this scenario the military exists such that it can check the power of the state. Do you propose a system of checks and balances to the power of a communist government? I would agree with this, but it may endanger the revolution every bit as much entirely restricted government.

I'd be very interested in reading some more about how a democratic communist government might be structured to sustain-ably exist with the checks and balances to prevent the aforementioned all controlling in group issue.

>>9294517
This is a pattern that is seen in many socialist revolutions, they wreck the economy and end up ruining the lives of the people they wanted to help.

Military juntas and the like at least have the virtue of often managing to preserve the interests of the people that support them. (Church, industrialist etc.)

>>9294235
Half of those weren't even communist texts.

>>9294256
>Being this much of a brainlet.

Pay attention to his multifaceted analysis of the concept of freedom. It bears on your idea of totalitarianism, he says rightly that from the perspective of capital increasing freedom in society is taken to be a reduction in freedom because it's predicated on the restriction of free enterprises caprice.

This is at the core of the totalitarian image, when free enterprise feels restricted it begins to equate its situation with even slavery and the fabrications begin. It's actually absolutely neurotic and the fact that people interpret it as sincere is quite sad.

>>9289348
how can white bois even compete?

>>9294270
This is funny because Piketty has admitted to never having read Marx.

>>9294265
You've been lied to. Aren't you interested to know how and why?

>>9294527
>thinking you can publicly advocate communism and not have cointelbro in your anus
>have to be a christian to be president

If you think something is bad compare it objectively to your current situation and you'll realize that first of all it's not very different and second of all that you actually don't care.

>>9295032

I don't dispute this. I essentially agree with what you posted. Increased market control to remove poverty with iron clad human rights and other essential freedoms. Fine, this is probably the right path.

I have been arguing primarily against the means of violent revolution this entire time, and you have been consistently trying to accuse me of being stupid because I am opposed to the essential tenets of market regulation and wealth distribution. I am not, and these things I do think can be centralised without a loss of liberty.

My argument is, and always has been that the violent means of revolution will inevitably undermine the goals of said revolution, at least when it comes to communism.

That a move to a more centrally planned system was not desirable I never said.

>>9289348
Well @realDonaldTrump, at least I will go down as a president!

Ooga booga if if if uhh uhh ahh ahh if if if

Okie doke!

>>9294517
Stalin vastly improved everyones life in the Soviet Union, what are you even talking about?

Ever heard of the fact that he took the union from the plough to the spaceship in 30 years?

Or what about tripling life expectancy?

Maybe the huge and consistent amounts of economic growth during his lifetime?

You're literally denying reality in order to fit history into your image of Stalin as an irrational boogeyman.

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>>9295077

>>9294525
Shut up brainlet.

>>9295061
Well, when it matters I doubt anyone will have the luxury to try to slowly reform capitalism. Quite often when market society begins to dysfunction the ruling class has no qualms about instituting fascism.

What's your argument for the fact that a violent revolution creates a repressive society? Make a general argument and give me say a handful of historical situations where this was observed. I think you'll find that most civilizations emerged out of barbarity, some like the US are sustained by a continual stream of horror, and we ~collectively~ don't denounce them.

Probably b8, but I might as well.

>>9295084
>he took the union from the plough to the spaceship in 30 years
No, he built a spaceship in slightly less than 30 years. But the kolkhoz were still very widespread when comrade Gagarin breached the barriers of cold, dark space.

>Or what about tripling life expectancy?
R-right. Unless you're claiming that the average life expectancy was around 25 years of age under Alexander Nikolayevitch, we can disregard this.

>huge and consistent amounts of economic growth during his lifetime
Still inferior to that of the filthy capitalists. And GULag wasn't even necessary for that!

>>9295111

My argument is that revolutionary means must by necessity of maintaining the revolution employ excessive violence and repression, at least in the short term. The issue is forcing the government to relinquish this after the designated period. I believe no regime should have this level of power, hence I am critical of the US also. No regime should be able to commit unaccountable violence.

Even ignoring this, I believe that violent means resulting in a dictatorship of the proletariat, or whatever form of strong central government you choose are fundamentally incompatible with what a communistic system requires, which is a total restructuring of society and the destruction of class. The central government that must be established to maintain the revolution will itself forever be an exception to that ideal, and it cannot give up its power without sacrificing the revolution to those who oppose it. There have been no historical cases so far of someone giving up this kind of power once achieved and stripping back the role of the government to the ideal democratic government that primarily exercises control of the market. So I feel that these means are incompatible with the goals of communism.

>>9295152
>Unnecessary for the capitalists
What is colonialism, slavery and genocide upon genocide?
Also the Soviet Union developed at a pace much faster than the USA ever did.

>Or what about tripling life expectancy?
Rough estimate, it's somewhere between doubling and tripling. It could have just been doubling though. Still literally unheard of in the timespan anywhere in all of history.

Your first point is an irrelevant attempt to diminish the successes of socialism and history will remember that capitalism lost the space race so I have nothing to say about that.

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*Blocks your path*

>>9295165
I don't mean this in an insincere way, read Lenin.

>>9295084
If the USSR was a sufficiently democratic and comfortable society, would Stalin have needed to imprison so many people?

>>9295187

Thank you for the sincere recommendation. I will. I am by no means entrenched in my positions.

At last, a use for my Russian.

>>9295183
What's really important is that the Eastern Bloc functioned pretty well without being able to rely on a massive exploited third-worry proletariat.

>>9295286
>>9295286
>>9295286

Yes! Instead they got to rely on massively exploited Ukrainian and Polish proletariat!

Don't try to pretend that it wasn't every bit as imperialist as the west.

>>9295270
How many people do you think were imprisoned and for how long?

The gulag thing is a complete myth. Close to 90% of the people who went to gulags were out in 5 years or less. The vast amount of them weren't political prisoners. The fact that they have labour in prison really shouldn't surprise you if you live in the US.

What was life like in the Gulags?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-hub.bz/doi/10.1111/russ.10683/abstract

How many people were in the Gulags and for how long? What were they in for?
http://www.cercec.fr/materiaux/doc_membres/Gabor%20RITTERSPORN/Victims%20of%20the%20Gulag.pdf

>>9295299
Lol

>>9295270
>would Stalin have needed to imprison so many people?
Gulags were mostly used as "progressive" jails. Check it out, the penitentiary system was mostly used as a means to the Gulag.

They were shitholes, but they weren't exactly exclusive for political force. They were approximatedly 28,7 % of the total population of the Gulag.

The average population inside of the gulags was 2 million, also; in a population of several millions.

However, I'm no apologist, the estimated ammount of killed for political repression was 800.000 approximatedly, most of them during the 1937 and 1938.

Read Zemskov.

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off topic but what do you guys think of the abridged version vs unabridged?

>>9295270
Oh, also, bad error of mine; 600.000 aprox. of the condemned for political reasons died without being killed, probably of starvation.

Zemskov stimated, thus, that only 1,4 million people died in political repression on the gulags over three decades (the use of it also decreased drastically during the war) . That's ridiculous, but if one should compare it to the western data, or Solzhenitzyn, it's not as "child eating monstruous."

>>9295425

Still fairly fucking bad senpai.

>>9295603
Absolutely.

>>9295603
For sure, but we need to be wary of people who have ulterior motives for exaggerating such tragedies

>>9293978
10/10

>>9294035
thanks for the recs comrade