In total, more than one crore lives were lost in this oppression of the countryside by Stalin! European intellectuals were not aware of all this at all. They only knew about the infamous ‘The Great Purge’ in which politicians, writers, etc. were executed in sham trials in Russia in the 1930s. Because most of those killed were Russian intellectuals. (This article is based on the review ‘The Masterpiece of Our Time’ written by Professor Gary Saul Morson in June 2024.)
Legacy of the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ – 1
Fifty years ago, the publication of the English translation of Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s magnum opus ‘Gulag Archipelago 1918 – 1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation’ was a sensational event. Gu.Lag. That is, the abbreviation form of the name of ‘Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps’ in Soviet Russia. The Archipelago is a network of labor-torture camps, like hidden islands, scattered throughout the Soviet Union. ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ was a monumental account of the reality of those camps.
That book destroyed the image of Soviet socialism as if with an explosion. Rather, such a fascinating truth was shown that people all over the world shuddered! After that, it was no longer possible for any leftist intellectual to have the same emotional attachment towards socialism and the Soviet Union as before. The entire course of discussion changed in France, where socialism was the most dominant intellectual. In America too, under the shadow of the Vietnam War, the growing neo-leftist tide towards Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, etc. suddenly stopped.
The testimony of the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ was so detailed, authentic and powerful. Written in three volumes, seven parts, forty-two chapters, and nearly two thousand pages, this book is a heart-wrenching portrait of thirty-eight years of Soviet communism, from 1918 to 1956. It seems as if Solzhenitsyn has written this great saga by measuring each and every word and symbol. In fact, at the end of the last century, ‘Time’ magazine considered it the most important non-fiction book of the twentieth century in the entire world.
Then what did Solzhenitsyn mean by calling it ‘literary’? The answer to this lies the secret of his classic greatness. Also, without reading that book the full truth of Soviet Communism cannot be understood. Even before its publication, European intellectuals were aware of repression and persecution in the Soviet Union. But they considered it to be a thing of decades past, a thing of the past of the Stalin era. When this book arrived, he was shocked to know that it could only be written in strict secrecy, which was kept in pieces and hidden in different persons and places so that the entire manuscript would not be lost in a raid by the Soviet police.
It was somehow smuggled out and published abroad – this was a surprise for Western intellectuals. In fact, even the author could never put together his entire manuscript and present it in a completely refined form, for which he even apologized to the readers. In the words of Solzhenitsyn, “Here and there there are signs of sudden beginning, incompleteness, the oppression of our literature.” But ultimately that flaw also increased the beauty of that book. Made his communication fundamental.
Before that, in 1965, another manuscript of Solzhenitsyn and many other records had been lost in a raid. That’s why Solzhenitsyn took utmost care with the manuscript of ‘Gulag’. All the more so because it contained the real names and locations of countless people who had told Solzhenitsyn what they had seen. There was no repression of literature in Russia then, writing was simply a dangerous activity. Not just for writers, but for anyone. A letter written to someone, any suspicious phrase in it, even a minor complaint could become the basis for sending someone to a torture camp for ten-twenty years.
All this was unbelievable to Western intellectuals. They thought that something similar would have happened in Tsarist Russia, just as a writer was punished, sent to Siberia, etc. For them, the ultimate model of permanent oppression was tsarism. That is why, in his book, Solzhenitsyn has given a lot of space to the comparison of the prisons and laws of Tsarism and the normal life and laws of the Soviet Union. After reading this one laughs at calling the Czar an oppressor.
Take the numbers: From 1876 to 1904, Russia experienced general strikes, peasant revolts, and terrorism, including the assassination of Tsar Alexander II and other high officials. During this period, a total of 486 people were hanged. That means seventeen people were hanged every year throughout Russia. Which also included common, non-political criminals. This culminated in the rebellion of 1905, over which great Russian writers like Lev Tolstoy and Korolenko shed tears and cursed the regime. So, between 1905 and 1908, 2200 people were hanged. Which the people of that time considered like an epidemic of hanging. In comparison, Soviet extrajudicial killings – whether by shooting, forced starvation, or as a result of forced labor in sub-zero temperatures – figure for such killings at the hands of the regime in the millions.”
The most horrifying thing about these murders was that none of those punished dead had committed any mistake or crime of their own. As early as 1918, that is, in the very first year of communist rule, Cheka (secret police) leader Martin Ivanovich Latsis had instructed revolutionary courts to give summary judgments, in which each accused would be tried separately and found guilty or innocent. There was no need. “It was enough to see only his class”, that is, if a caught person belonged to the kulak (landlord) or merchant class, then this was enough to consider him a criminal.
“This is the meaning of the Red Terror,” Latsis said proudly. On this basis, more than five million people were sent to die in barren, icy areas with temperatures well below zero, without supplies or tools. , All this was not a deviation from the principles of Marx-Lenin. Lenin, the head of the new communist regime, had said, “For example, hang a businessman by hanging” because “a businessman and a scoundrel are the same thing.”
So, Stalin and other Leninist Bolsheviks implemented this principle in full detail. After the Kulaks, many communities also got the same punishment, simply because despite being Russian, they came from German, Crimean Tatar, Polish, Korean, Jewish, etc. origin. They were despoiled en masse and sent away. In the name of the fact that they may sometimes do something wrong by taking help from foreigners. Similarly, after the ‘extermination of the kulaks’, ordinary farmers were also forced into famine. In grain producing areas like Ukraine, the government forcibly took away all the grain, and fishing in the rivers was also banned.
Due to which a large part of the local population died of hunger in the next few months. Idealistic Bolshevik youth from the cities came and enforced this forced famine in the villages. They believed that it was better to eliminate many classes to create a new classless society. In total, more than one crore lives were lost in this oppression of the countryside by Stalin! European intellectuals were not aware of all this at all. They only knew about the infamous ‘The Great Purge’ in which politicians, writers, etc. were executed in sham trials in Russia in the 1930s. Because most of those killed were Russian intellectuals.