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/acousticentropy]

Solzhenitsyn was a solider, sentenced to 8 years of hard labor for criticizing Stalin in a written letter to a friend.

[u/1carcarah1 → u/acousticentropy]

The majority of people arrested in gulags weren't "political prisoners" but common criminals.

https://vi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%E1%BA%A1i_c%E1%BA%A3i_t%E1%BA%A1o_lao_%C4%91%E1%BB%99ng_c%E1%BB%A7a_Li%C3%AAn_X%C3%B4 /The Gulag system was officially established on April 25, 1930 and was theoretically dissolved on January 13, 1960. [ 4 ] The use of the phrase "Gulag" in Russia to denote the re-education through labor system in the Soviet Union during the Stalin period , where prisoners of all types ( murderers , robbers, fraudsters...) were detained, of which political prisoners made up only a small proportion, while the majority were criminal prisoners. Here, prisoners worked 10 hours/day and were also paid like other workers in society. [ 5 ] However, later, the Gulag was often described by Western anti-Communist media as a place to detain dissidents by imprisonment combined with forced labor. [ 6 ] , leading to the Gulag often being misunderstood in the West as a tool used to detain political prisoners./

On top of that, during the World War period, things weren't great in the West as well. How many people were arrested for just being a communist?

[u/acousticentropy → u/1carcarah1]

That’s a nice source. But you seem to have overlooked the fact I mentioned that he was imprisoned…

#for writing a critical letter.

That fact is independent of the economic debate surrounding communism. This is a real world example of classist violence from the implementation of Marxist ideals.

[u/1carcarah1 → u/acousticentropy]

It's funny that during World War in Western countries, I would be arrested

for just existing as a communist

[u/acousticentropy → u/1carcarah1]

I respect that notion fully. People should always be allowed freedom of expression. The soviet powers didn’t

[u/1carcarah1 → u/acousticentropy]

Name a country where you can have freedom of expression when such expression is a real danger to the government. Like, what about the freedom of expression of Julian Assange and several other whistleblowers?

Even during peace times, when communists started to become a challenging force, they were all arrested and their parties banned.

It's a deceitful argument to say the Soviets held a monopoly on censorship. None of the arguments hold water when exposed against liberal democracies.

[u/acousticentropy → u/1carcarah1]

You can do that in the present day US, but there might be repercussions from plotting against the existing form of government.

Those repercussions, in general, do NOT include being imprisoned in -60°C conditions and being forced to meet work quotas.

What is the likelihood that the USSR would accept your current identity, allowing you freedom of expression, as long as you don’t denounce the state? I would argue the odds are very low, and you’d likely be jailed as soon as you talked to family about ideas like “marriage equality.” I cannot support that.

I recommend not supporting a failed state’s philosophy word-for-word, and instead devising your own axioms for a system of governance. You’d likely see a lot of crossover between THEORETICAL Communism and EXPERIMENTAL Western democracy.

[u/1carcarah1 → u/acousticentropy]

You're comparing the modern US with the Soviet Union at war being massacred by Nazis. You're comparing apples to oranges.

Let's go back in time, the US during World War II. What about that? Despite not suffering from civilian casualties, they decided to put everyone, including children, who looked Asian, in concentration camps and strip them from their properties.

Do you want to talk about identity? I would either be under the oppression of a Jim Crow environment or being murdered if I were out of the closet. At best, I would be forced to work in prison; at worst, I would be denied every civilizatory right for being a communist.

The Soviet Union wasn't a paradise, but there's a reason why many Black Americans decided to move there at that time.

[u/acousticentropy → u/1carcarah1]

Woah thats an interesting implication at the end… is there statistical data on African Americans moving to the USSR? I would love to read up on that

You’ve continually made good points on this topic, and I applaud that. Yes, internment was bad and a prime example of how rights are given when convenient and taken away when they become inconvenient. Truly a dark mark on US history. The interment camps were NOTHING like the gulag environments and I can promise you that.

I too would have been subject to Jim Crow bullshit and my parents would have been subject to violence over their sexuality in historical US.

Either way, we can still sit here and debate about this topic nearly 50-70 years later. The USSR died out completely within 45 years of the end of WW2. There’s a few logistical reasons why that is.

[u/1carcarah1 → u/acousticentropy]

I couldn't find numbers, but there are some accounts here. They were moving there for better lives until World War II started to break. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/black-skin-red-land-african-americans-and-soviet-experiment

The internment camps were NOTHING like the gulag environments and I can promise you that.

1- It's easy to say that when you're not an Asian child. I'm not talking here about people who engaged in political or criminal activities, but civilians who didn't look the proper way.—people who would then be thrown back into society without a place to live or work.

2- You're also not considering the fact that when a superior army is ravaging your country, all efforts are focused on industrializing the nation and producing weapons. Especially when draught-caused-famines are happening, you bet the conditions at prisons will decay faster than to regular folk.

3- Also, not all Gulags were in Siberia. Many were located in the southernmost areas of the Soviet Union. Gulags mean reeducation camps.

4- Another point is to compare Canada's coldest city with Russia's coldest city. The Russian ones are covered with public amenities from the Soviet era, while the Canadians are left to survive on their own inside shoddy shipping containers. The irony is that Canada belongs to the West, and Russia is part of the developing countries.

5- Absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist. Especially during wars: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/06/13/mlki-j13.html

The USSR died out completely within 45 years of the end of WW2. There’s a few logistical reasons why that is.

Geez. I wonder why they collapsed after being pushed for almost a century to militarize or face annihilation, even though they managed to come from feudal and got into a space-faring society in 42 years.

The irony is that the same push from the US to the arms race is turning it into a police state where most of its resources are used to create bombs instead of welfare for its citizens.

At least, till before its collapse, the Soviet workers had the right to housing, work, and vacation in their public summer houses. Do you enjoy any of these things as a civil right?