We know a great deal about the Nazi death camps, but almost nothing about the vast network of labour camps which were once scattered across Russia - from the White Sea to the Black Sea, and from the Arctic circle to the plains of Central Asia. This work draws together the mass of memoirs published in Russia and digests the vast archival materials now available. The gulag had antecedents in Czarist Russia but took its modern form in the Soviet era. But it is wrong to believe that it came to an end with the Stalinist era. Throughout the 70 years of the Soviet Union, the camps remained the state's ultimate weapon, serving the same purpose: to punish, to isolate and, above all, to frighten.
The origins of the gulag, 1917-1939: Bolshevik beginnings; "The First
Camp of the Gulag"; 1929 - the great turning point: the White Sea canal; the
camps expand; the great terror and its aftermath. Life and work in the camps:
arrest; prison; transport, arrival, selection; life in the camps; work in the
camps; punishment and reward; the guards; the prisoners; women and children;
the dying; strategies of survival; rebellion and escape. The rise and fall of
the camp-industrial complex, 1940-1986: the war begins; "strangers"; amnesty
- and afterwards; the zenith of the camp-industrial complex; the death of
Stalin; the Zeks' revolution; thaw - and release; the era of the dissidents;
the 1980 - smashing statues.
Anne Applebaum studied Russian at Yale and International Relations and East European politics at the London School of Economics and St Antony's College, Oxford. She has been a writer and editor at the Economist and deputy editor at the Spectator, writing about European and British politics, as well as Warsaw correspondent for the Boston Globe and The Independent. She is now a columnist and a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post.
