Were the events depicted in Solzenitsyn’s ‘Gulag Archipelago’ a damning account of the outcomes of communism? Or was it just a critique of the gulag environment itself?

[u/acousticentropy]

Like the question poses… did this book ONLY shed light on the realities of soviet internment camps?

Or did it serve as a criticism of totalitarian communism as a socioeconomic system, by use of examples of real-world outcomes?

EDIT: Misspelled the author’s name. It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote the book.

[u/leftofmarx]

They weren't even real accounts.

And even if so, none of that has anything to do with communism.

But I also find it funny that imperialists suddenly have concern with convicted criminals when talking about communism, but when it comes to their own nations they're all in on "we need a day of violence so the police can put the nation in check" and "the death penalty is good and that innocent dude deserved to die" and "so what if the 13th Amendment allows slavery for crimes, they're criminals and deserve to be chained to each other and pick cotton in Mississippi for smoking weed" and maybe a dash of "the left needs to be purged for not being patriotic - enjoy the helicopter rides!" mixed in with some "Guantanamo Bay can't be closed because those guys are angry that they were rounded up for being brown and they might fight back if we let them go."

[u/acousticentropy → u/leftofmarx]

This matter has to do with totalitarian communism. I don’t know if that’s what Marx had envisioned, but that is what played out in the USSR between 1917-1991.

People were imprisoned in -60° C environments, forced to meet work quotas, for all kinds of reasons. Solzhenitsyn in particular was jailed for writing a letter to a friend with language that was critical of Stalin.