Book cover of Gulag: A History

Book description

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • This magisterial and acclaimed history offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.

“A tragic testimony to how evil ideologically inspired dictatorships can be.” –The…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Gulag as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Well paced, exhaustively researched and ought be required reading for anyone with an interest in Russia or the former Soviet Union. The Gulag was a virtually endless supply of forced labor for the USSR. Life in the camps, their detainees and overseers, is depicted in graphic, precise detail. The political and social cover given to the massive system is explained in meticulous fashion. A great read for any history buff.

A magisterial account of the brutal system of labour camps to which hundreds of thousands of people were consigned as criminals by the Soviet state. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov offer us vivid first-hand accounts of the experience of being a prisoner in the gulag, but what Applebaum has achieved is to tell the history of an entire system without ever losing sight of the individuals who were its victims.

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