The Gulag Archipelago

The reasons why each person or nation may experience growth or prosperity may be different; however, the origin of this success is the same. The people who suffer are able to use that suffering to produce better outcomes and experiences. In the absence of suffering, there are no lessons to be learned and no reason to reflect on alternatives. To suffer does not only mean to experience physical pain, but it can also mean to experience emotional pain or be extremely displeased of a current situation. To suffer is to be discontent, and one must do anything to prevent an enduring unhappiness. As a result, growth and success are achieved. In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn identified a link between suffering and learning; suffering being the cause and learning being the effect. In The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich…

Many people can relate to knowing bosses that are ruthless and not caring. That is the same problem that Ivan Denisovich had. The character I was talking about is Volkovoi. He was a very unruly, sadistic, and demanding person. He is a Lieutenant in the Siberian Prisoner of War camp after the Second World War. He was undoubtedly the worst behaved person in the the book of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The reason I say this is because he is the most relatable person. The first…

meaning the government seizure of Kulak Farmland, Kulak’s were the peasant class in USSR. After Collectivization the Kulak’s were forced to work the land but entitled to none of the crops the land they worked and once owned had produced. This had not only consolidated governmental power in USSR but also provided a scape goat for Stalin to blame in times of trouble the Lower Class. When famine hit Russia Stalin used his scape goat to explain this shortage of food, the people working the farms the…

This novel is set in the 1950’s in a forced labor prison camp, run by the Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Settlements, better known by the Russian acronym: GULAG. Although subject to the harsh, frosty winter conditions the prisoners were entitled to the slightest of independence in terms of food, clothing, leisure’s and much more. This altogether contributes largely to the theme of injustice in the novel. The protagonist of novel is Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. He is a prisoner…

The men show all that has been done within the gulag during one normal day with all the activities that have occurred. During the Stalin era, conditions were poor with people getting beat up and thrown in the cell with having to reason behind, having the audience being treated similarly to animals. Although the conditions destroyed the men by making them suffer, Solzhenitsyn shows how strong, the men truly are including what gets them through their days. The comparisons exemplify how brutally…

Even at the brink of starvation, the GULAG labor camps forced over a million people to do hard labor in extreme conditions of Siberia. In the fictional novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the author Alexander Solzhenitsyn depicts of the conditions prisoners had to face in the GULAG labor camp system. Based on the experience of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, the author portrays a typical day of a prisoner while revealing the effects of the inhuman conditions have and how the prisoners learn…

Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin is about a six year old boy living in communal housing with his father in Moscow, Russia during the 1900’s. As he slept under the table, Sasha awoke immediately at the sound of guards running up the stairs. While he watched his dad get taken away by the guards, he sat there helplessly. He got kicked out of his apartment by his neighbor and worked his way over to his aunt Larisa’s apartment. As soon as the streetcar dropped him off at his prison-like…

This novel has important historical context representing important contexts such as Soviet Censorship under their communist regime, it represents an accurate view of the gulag Soviet labour camps. Last the novel shows the political consequences caused by leaders in the USSR such as Josef Stalin and Khrushchev. “Revielle sounded as always at 5am” Ivan Denisovich Shukov was sentenced to a Soviet labour gulag camp after being accused of treason, after being captured by the Germans during World…

Life Inside a Cage Reporter Parsa Javan looks at the incredible, yet terrifying journey that David Fengel took to find freedom physically and emotionally. David Fengel was held captive by a communist Russian camp for nearly all his childhood. While we take it for granted, in the camp food and water were a great privilege to have. Freedom was not even reachable. He was unquestionably living inside a cage. David was feeling eager to tell me about the night he escaped. A guard from the camp…

Eugenia Ginzburg’s was an active communist member who found herself struggling to preserve her physical being and dignity while caught on the wrong side of the Great Terror. Her “counter political” correspondence would lead to arrest, as authorities twisted and exaggerated a few counter political articles into proof of Trotskyist terrorism. These claims immediately thrust her into a spiral of events that dramatically altered the course of her life would challenge the base of her moral ideology…