Have you read Gulag Archipelago yet?

Have you read Gulag Archipelago yet?

No, but I'm growing curious. Thing is, it's kind of long isn't it? Or is it.

no but I watched pinocchio

I have the Abridged version and its 500 pages so its not that bad. It's interesting. I'm on page 100 right now.

The unabridged version is 2000+ pages though

still on the greeks

I do remember when it was a thing. They spammed the shit out of it. It was everywhere. Narrow escape not reading it.

Is Gulag Archipelago the book with the 'controversial' observations about the unseen, or unacknowledged, hands behind the Soviet apparatus?

No but it's the same author.

It's pretty biased anti-soviet propaganda. Read it if you're into that kind of thing, it's not a bad book. Just remember that it's fiction.

I did in my teens, about half of it. I'm from east germany so these stories were nothing new really and I quit.
to be precise, my great-grandfather, a ordinary wehrmacht soldier, family father and baker, was starved by the russians in a reopened KZ in 1946. He was simply fetched by some russian soldiers, on an ordinary weekday without any reason, trial or accusation whatsover.

communism, not even once.

I dunno. Its just like anecdote after anecdote of all the horrible shit people in the USSR experienced through the gulag system.

Pretty rad book, whatever you think of it.

I spent a few hours one time just flipping it open to a random page and pasting a paragraph into Sup Forums. Each time the paragraph held a good lesson.

I had Volume 1 of it and read enough of it develop an abiding hatred of Bolsheviks, before it got put into box during a move and lost in Schrödinger's Storage Locker.

shoo shoo commie jew

>Just remember that it's fiction.
in truth, what you did to your own people was nothing less then adequate.
you are russians after all.

That the latest pony porn comic?

Kolyma Tales is also about Gulag, but much better, I swear

>A.

>FUCKING.

>LEAF.

The commies did a hell of a lot to try and kill the guy if what he wrote was fiction. They tried poisoning him in the 70s and did all they could to prevent the book from coming out, seems like a lot of effort to stop a fiction author.

I read all of it a couple of years ago as an ebook free from archive.org (unfortunately the footnotes were messed up by the format). It took me months. I just reread Vols. I-III. Powerful stuff, and it has a lot to say about the way Western society is headed as well.

"Kolyma" by Robert Conquest was utterly horrifying.

That's what turned me off, I think. I have some Russian ancestry, and was very reluctant to have my face pushed into anything presenting Russia in such a shit light. Huge political hay was made of it at the time. They gave him a medal iirc. It was a big propaganda event.

>Just remember that it's fiction.

He names names of both victims and perpetrators, gives dates, and footnotes what he can. It's real. In any case to invent 2000 pages of minute details like that would beyond the skills of the world's greatest liar.

>anything presenting Russia in such a shit light

It presents Communism in a shit light, not Russia. Solzhenitsyn was a massive Russian patriot and looked down on the West.

>tfw will inherit an older hardbook copy with slightly yellow pages already that smells as old as the typeface.

How's that genital mutilation working for you, burger?

>reminder the US has more prisoners percentage wise, and total population wise, than any estimate concerning the USSR

I borrowed a hardcover copy from my father-in-law (who is a hardcore lefty, go figure -- but he's old and the book was promoted heavily in the early 70s). Much more enjoyable to read it that way, but I need to get hold of Vols. IV-VII somewhere in physical form, though I can try to read the PDFs online if my eyeballs can stand it.

Ok.

Die nazi scum

The people who need to read it will discard it as fiction. Doesn't matter how many times it's been tried around the world it always ends in disaster. And yet some middle class shitstain who can't get a job suggests it might be the solution for America and the west?

The rest of us grew out of Marxism when we moved out of mom's and got jobs and mortgages. Is that the solution? Find work for professional SJWs so they can grow up?

Inb4 robot workforce and lying around enjoying leisure time on a basic wage you're delusional

>>reminder the US has more prisoners percentage wise

And most of them are actually guilty of something bad, unlike the people in the Gulag.

Solzenitzyn spent 25 years in the gulag so some events are hazy. His book, as Peterson described (I had him as a professor during my undergrad), is one long scream after he was freed.

Just started it today. Funny syncronicity I guess.
Im enjoying it, its really entertaining the way he writes. Also Im kinda eager to know about what brutalities happened there and find similitudes between the 'See something say nothing' thats going on on the book and our current society.

>it's fiction.

Thanks for clearing that up Pravda.

That's the fun of it is that it is both literary observation on life and historical documentation. It's one of the better "big" books that I've read for that reason.

>I had him as a professor

Pretty intense guy to judge by his videos.

how was he as a prof

I don't even see you

that's not true
>2% of 320 million is 6.4 million
>6.4 million is larger than 20-30 million
wew lad. learn anything

>Canadian refuses to face the realities of Communism because it hurts his sense of personal validation

This is why we'll be invading you in 30 years comrade.

I took an entire course on Gulag Literature as part of my Russian studies second major. I would recommend Gulag Archipelago if you're not averse to reading a whole lot of material. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a good primer for Gulag lit in general. I highly doubt any of it is fiction given the climate of censorship at the time (remember Potemkin villages?). There may be inaccuracies, sure, but that's simply because the prisoners weren't able to record anything or put anything to pen and paper until they were released. There were even ways to get around the system for certain persecuted groups like Baptists, where tiny copies of The Bible as wide as a male thumb were being sneaked into the compounds and hidden throughout the work site for them to read. This stuff is both fascinating and a warning for when current far-left politics go too far.

>A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
I've heard that recommendation before, but Gulag Archipelago is a pretty good page-turner as it is in my opinion, even if you get the idea before you get all the way through it.

No, it actually is a piece of anti-communist propaganda written by a guy who desperately wanted to suck up to the west and escape from USSR. Which is exactly what he eventually did. I don't like communism, I don't like USSR, but that doesn't make Gulag any more factual. The guy has a Nobel in literature for god's sake, they don't give Nobel in literature because the writing is good do they.

I thought he always lived in Russia and that he was very critical against the West?

Just downloaded it because of the debate

Based. His Youtube videos are pretty much his lectures sprinkled with how it deals with personality (he's a personality psychologist) so it's nice to hear them again. Now his lectures are heard by millions instead of the mere thousands over the decades he's been teaching. This whole free speech debacle has really backfired on SJWs and our provincial government (Kathleen Wynne, super SJW lesbian).

We watched the Lion King once for one of his lectures and noticed how often the animators draw innuendos or non-verbal speech.

The thing about Peterson is, he rarely gets it wrong because unlike his contemporaries, he puts effort into research and critically analyses the data available. That's why the university and the Liberals are so afraid of him so they just want him silenced.

Peterson isn't perfect, he believes in the holohoax and uses it to teach, seems to be a pacifist, not believing in violence is valid at any point but has lots of good insight otherwise.

His videos are his lectures. His classes usually have high attendance because of said intensity.

I've only read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was pretty harrowing.

How does Gulag Archipelago compare? going to get it at the library tomorrow perhaps

No I'm just looking at Jung right now.

NOT TRUE COMMUNISM

>they don't give Nobel in literature because the writing is good do they.

They used to. And if Solzhenitsyn wanted to suck up to the West, why did he damn it at hs Harvard address?

His inmates who were in GULAG's themselves renounce him as cyka and liar though.

...

>His inmates who were in GULAG's themselves renounce him as cyka and liar though.

Let me guess: they were grateful for the experience of being nearly worked to death in Siberia as punishment for having the wrong political opinions?

Of course they did, after the Party helped them discover that they were simply misinformed about the nature of their experience in the gulags.

Source?