Ett oväntat fel har inträffat. by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Ett oväntat fel har inträffat. Reviews

• 
  P.K. Ryan

  'A stone is not a human being, and even stones get crushed.'
  
  This was an absolutely brutal, yet enlightening read. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a young, decorated Red Army officer who served bravely during the war, only to be arrested, tortured, and sent to the Gulag Archipelago (the forced labor camp system) to do a ten year sentence, followed by permanent internal exile. This book is a combination of his own personal experiences, and a general history of the gulag system which he has gathered from research as well as other personal stories sent to him by other inmates.
  
  For privately criticizing Stalin, the author was clearly guilty of being a dangerous 'enemy of the people' worthy of torture and death,(Solzhenitsyn writes with a brilliant sense of sarcasm) but the fact is, many were arrested quite arbitrarily, many simply because of a need to fill quotas. I'm reminded of a quote by Stalins right hand man Molotov, when speaking about the randomness of arrests, years after the war: 'a man could have been a right winger, and not realized he was a right winger. We had to be sure.' Or something to that effect. These enemies of the people would feed the 'sewage disposal system' of the Soviet state.
  
  In his sarcastic, metaphorical writing style, the author describes all the horrors of the system, beginning with arrest and torture, *ahem* interrogation, and all through the stages of the camp system where death and cruelty became the only certainties. Ruthlessness, Solzhenitsyn writes, was the measure of a Bolsheviks worth. The single mindedly cruel he was, determined his dedication to the state. Any form of kindness toward the accused was seen as a sign of weakness and lack of zeal. Most disturbing was his descriptions of the torture, he claims that there were 52 different methods at the interrogators disposal, to ensure they don't become bored of course! 14 hour work days in subzero temperatures with inadequate clothing and pitiful food rations were also the norm. People were often beaten, terrorized and shot out of hand for the smallest infractions, or occasionally for the mere amusement of the guards. Such is life in the Archipelago!
  
  Although some have accused Solzhenitsyn of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i.e. condemning communism as a whole because of Stalinism, he is absolutely right when he claims that the brutality and terror were started under Lenin and Trotsky. While one can split hairs and argue that things might have turned out differently without Stalin, I see no reason to believe that things would have been THAT different. He also makes a consistent point of comparing the Soviet state to that of the Tsars, claiming that whatever their faults, life in Imperial Russia was never even close to this harsh. I specifically appreciated how he pointed out how easy the Bolshevik revolutionaries had it when they were arrested under the Tsar. Two, maybe three years in lenient exile for trying to overthrow the state! Yet under the Soviets, you would get 10, maybe 25 years of hard labor for practically nothing, which you would probably not survive anyway. All in all, this is a disturbing but brilliant and essential read for understanding the Soviet state. 5 stars.
• 
  Lewis Bennington

  If you want to know how to have and maintain freedom, never allow a small yet violently determined group of socialists gain any type of power. If you do, then you will soon be living this book instead of reading it.
• 
  Craig M. Schuster

  Excellent abridged version.
• 
  Sailsman

  What communists did to Russians was as bad or worse than what Nazis did to Jews.
  
  I would add this practical piece of advice: Solzyenitsyn points out that almost all the people hauled away to the Gulag were done so not via forced round ups of many people at once, but by being picked off by the security forces one by one. In other words, you, the victim, would be stopped in the street, the office, school or in his apartment/flat by one or two men with a car waiting nearby and told, sometimes even politely asked, to come with us (remember the scene in Godfather I when Tom Hagen was stopped by the Turk while exiting a store after X Mass shopping and quietly told to get in the car?). And you'd go. This method has the virtue of being relatively quiet and hard to notice so that no would be rescuers really noticed the incident and no crowd would ever gather. You went quietly into the night.
  
  So, the advice? Always make a BIG stink if anyone tries to take you away. A crowd will gather or someone will record the incident with a phone, perhaps even intervene. Thats your best hope. Someone has to see and bear witness.
• 
  Charles P. Miller

  Already knew a lot of this history but Gulag is on Jordan Peterson's reading list so. Gulag is not the story of Aleksandr Solzhenitsy, nor is it a history book it is much than that. The real value, and I think a main reason its on JP's list, is in the underlying message that this is not the story of Russia, or the Russian people, or Stalin or anyone but of everyone. Every single one of us, every day, in ways big and small, acts in ways that serve to bring forth either a better world, or the hell of the Gulag Archipelago. Be warned, this is some very unpleasant reading. No one wants to think of being imprisoned indefinitely in a cell too small even to sit or lie down in, let alone in one with so many bedbugs they are falling off the ceiling and crawling from everywhere, so many you cannot kill them all even if you could stomach the stench. But it will be worth it to absorb the lesson that this is the cost and end result of lies. Speak the truth. At whatever cost. If you want to know how high the cost of lies can be, read the Gulag Archipelago.
• 
  M. A. Seifter

  Solzhenitsyn's autobiography of his experience in the Soviet slave labor camps, an 'experiment in literary investigation', stands as a thundering condemnation of the entire rotten enterprise of Bolshevik Soviet Communism. A great book, which opened tsunamis of controversy and adulation when it was first published, it was abridged magnificently in the 1980s, with the author's full endorsement, losing none of its original titanic force. Anyone and everyone today who would like to understand how and, maybe why a government that promised human liberation, equality and emancipation would begin to enslave its own people, and to consign them to the nothingness of savage internment in remote slave camps where human life was worth nothing at all should read, and re read this magnificent book.
• 
  goodreads Customer

  Just into this series. Very compelling.
• 
  JRT

  Just started reading it. In the 80's Canada under the Mulroney regime, (aka The Progressive Party) had books by Solzhenitsyn banned. I don't know which one it was, but this sounds like it could have been one of them. Australian already has Gulags (aka covid camps). USA has FEMA camps, and Canada is considering them. Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.
• 
  MR S M FOSTER Mrs THERESA FOSTER

  I have raised an issue with the company. Having just received volume 2 from a different seller, I was extremely disappointed withthe quality of volumes 1 and 3 that I nought from this seller. The paper is half the thickness of the other sellers, despite being the same publisher, it has no barcode on the the inside cover and the covers themselves are thickly glued on which has already affected the turning of the pages. At full price, I am not happy, and although I have sent pictures at their request, I am yet to receive a further response £30 spent!
• 
  I Paterson

  Book came with a crease on the front cover which was not ideal for a brand new book which was purchased as a birthday present
• 
  Rasa P.

  This was supposed to be a gift, but the package arrived all crushed and the book inside not really fit to be given as a present.