Reading list

Gulag: A History, by Anne Applebaum.

This is an overdue book, since historians have not given the history of the Soviet Union the attention it deserves. In her introduction, Applebaum attempts to give an explanation for why this is so.

Applebaum shows that, contrary to popular belief, the existence of the extensive system of Soviet prisons was a known fact for many decades. She also finds that Alexander Solzhenitsyn (author of Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956) was correct in his assertion that the Gulag system was not some aberration of an otherwise humane Soviet system (the view of many scholars even today), buy a key factor in it very existence.