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The Gulag Archipelago

195 statements
37 feature instances
3 referencing feature instances

The Gulag Archipelago	type	TVTItem
The Gulag Archipelago	label	The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago	page	TheGulagArchipelago
The Gulag Archipelago	comment	The Gulag Archipelago is a book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was written between 1958 and 1968 and first published in 1973.An account of life in The Gulag, required reading in Russian high schools as of 2009. Multiple editions exist, most of which have been abridged because of the sheer length. This book tells the story of the Gulag from Solzhenitsyn's perspective as a former inmate, in stark contrast to the Soviet Union's account of the Gulag once it was shut down upon Stalin's death. Solzhenitsyn considered their account to have been written with rose-coloured goggles. The First Circle can be considered the more fictionally-inclined sequel.
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The Gulag Archipelago	parsed	2023-11-10T22:30:23Z
The Gulag Archipelago	processingComment	Dropped link to Averted: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
The Gulag Archipelago	processingUnknown	Averted
The Gulag Archipelago	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Gulag Archipelago / int_137f2d7	type	Card-Carrying Villain
The Gulag Archipelago / int_137f2d7	comment	Card-Carrying Villain: Solzhenitsyn discusses the trope and says the people like that only exist in fiction; real human beings need to justify themselves and present their evil acts as good.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_222dc873	type	Black Comedy
The Gulag Archipelago / int_222dc873	comment	Black Comedy: The combination of endless misinformation, impossible tasks and no concern whatsoever for the lives of the prisoners mostly results in tragedy, but also in a few moments that would not be out of place in a comedy skit. One of the most farcical instances concerns building inspectors being shown a newly-completed apartment block where several of the bathtubs had "gone missing" at various points of the process due to corrupt officials. The solution was for several prisoners and one experienced sealant applier to rip out the tubs in the first rooms the inspectors had checked, rush them up the back stairs and install them in the last rooms on the inspectors' schedule before they could get there. It worked. See also the example under Hidden in Plain Sight
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_2484396e	type	Know-Nothing Know-It-All
The Gulag Archipelago / int_2484396e	comment	Know-Nothing Know-It-All: The infamous propagator of pseudoscience, Trofim Lysenko, pops up. When his "ideas" on science and agriculture go to seed, he insists that it was the fault of the agronomists who followed his orders.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_2484396e	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_2eb94abd	type	Deadly Euphemism
The Gulag Archipelago / int_2eb94abd	comment	Deadly Euphemism: Chapter title "History Of Our Sewage Disposal System."
The Gulag Archipelago / int_2eb94abd	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_3cb1d38d	type	Bad Boss
The Gulag Archipelago / int_3cb1d38d	comment	Bad Boss: Too many Gulag camp managers to count. In many cases they were responsible to no one and had total control over the zeks' lives, with predictable results.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_3cb1d38d	featureApplicability	1.0
The Gulag Archipelago / int_3cb1d38d	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_3cc67dff	type	The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People
The Gulag Archipelago / int_3cc67dff	comment	The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: There is a chapter called The Ascent that explores how people could actually become better while living in the slavery and poverty of the work camp.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_3cc67dff	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_3e8d9cd3	type	Historical Hero Upgrade
The Gulag Archipelago / int_3e8d9cd3	comment	Historical Hero Upgrade: By the regime of itself, its predecessors, and ironically many of the people they threw behind bars who were safely dead. On the author's part, Solzhenitsyn's high opinion of Tsarist Russia is... controversial.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_41a3e267	type	Hidden in Plain Sight
The Gulag Archipelago / int_41a3e267	comment	Hidden in Plain Sight: At one point when news of the atrocities leaked and caused enough pressure that a respected writer was invited to the camps to inspect the conditions, the guards successfully prevented the obviously starving and abused prisoners from catching his eye and prompting closer inspection by... threatening them into sitting still and silently on the ground in a large group and throwing large tarpaulin sheets over the lot of them. The writer, rather than seeing inmates who he might want to take a closer look at and talk to, simply saw the sheets and didn't think to wonder what they were doing there. It seems like the guards themselves could hardly believe they got away with that.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_424c9a9b	type	Cold-Blooded Torture
The Gulag Archipelago / int_424c9a9b	comment	Cold-Blooded Torture: Some sections read like a manual on how to become a Torture Technician or Shadow Dictator. You'll never look at office chairs or baggy pants the same way again.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_479d4e5a	type	Would Hurt a Child
The Gulag Archipelago / int_479d4e5a	comment	Would Hurt a Child: Children were not exempt from being shipped to the gulag, and they suffered no less than the adult inmates. Due to essentially growing up in an environment where survival required doing practically anything, by any means, plenty of adolescents took advantage of older, weaker adults by stealing their allotted rations and beating them into helplessness in order to take whatever they might possess, all without a shred of remorse. This, in turn, caused the adults to have such a profound and corrosive hatred for them that, given half a chance, they would kill any kid they could lay hands on. One particular inmate's preferred method was to pin them to the ground and kneel on their chests until the ribs cracked, but didn't fully break. This way, they suffered for days before dying, and nobody would know why.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_4d1b485d	type	Dedication
The Gulag Archipelago / int_4d1b485d	comment	Dedication: The book is dedicated "to all those who did not live to tell it."
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_4fdd0d29	type	Place Worse Than Death
The Gulag Archipelago / int_4fdd0d29	comment	Place Worse Than Death: The eponymous Gulags.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_55940b68	type	Doorstopper
The Gulag Archipelago / int_55940b68	comment	Doorstopper: It is a very large book, normally published in three heavy volumes.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_5937a87c	type	No Honor Among Thieves
The Gulag Archipelago / int_5937a87c	comment	No Honor Among Thieves: The "58s", as the political prisoners are called, have to share their camps with the "socially friendly" elements, the thieves and career criminals, and Solzhenitsyn makes it very clear that the romanticization of the thieves has no basis at all in reality, particularly as the camp administration could trust the thieves to keep the 58s under strict control. Averted during the Kengir Revolt, much to everyone's surprise.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_5da3f522	type	Big Brother Is Watching
The Gulag Archipelago / int_5da3f522	comment	Big Brother Is Watching: Everywhere. And that means everywhere. One common tactic of the authorities was to plant a so-called "stool pigeon" in the cells to spy on the prisoners. Solzhenitsyn alludes to numerous cases of inmates being slapped with another prison sentence for having been loose-tongued in the presence of a spy. One of the earlier chapters describes in detail the ubiquity of the archipelago, and reminds the readers that in Stalin's time, every train station and post office would have a cell.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_63389b0b	type	Kids Are Cruel
The Gulag Archipelago / int_63389b0b	comment	Kids Are Cruel: Once they adapt to their new environment (far faster and more thoroughly than an adult) they certainly are. Solzhenitsyn describes one event when children (about 12 years old) lured a nurse into a cell with dozens of them by lying about one of them being sick, and then pinned her down and barricaded the doors, doing everything to her from biting and beating to gang rape. Unlike some of the terrible things they did for food (stealing a weaker adult's clothes and then selling them, leaving the adult to starve and freeze) this particular atrocity had no discernible motive beyond For the Evulz, and if asked about it the savage children would probably not have had the moral vocabulary to explain it.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_6ada388a	type	Russian Guy Suffers Most
The Gulag Archipelago / int_6ada388a	comment	Russian Guy Suffers Most: Hell yes, they all do. Also the Ukrainian guy, Belarusian guy, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian guys...
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_72bafff5	type	Doomed Moral Victor
The Gulag Archipelago / int_72bafff5	comment	Doomed Moral Victor: There are a fair number of these, as you might expect, but there are also surprising instances where staying true to one's principles bought an inexplicable reprieve. Solzhenitsyn gives a few examples of cases where the officials were so surprised by defiance that they didn't know what to do, backed down, and tried to ignore the prisoner rather than risk drawing attention to themselves, and cases where moral conviction seems to have had a massive positive impact on the prisoner's resistance to disease and starvation.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_901046d2	type	The Informant
The Gulag Archipelago / int_901046d2	comment	The Informant: Stoolies, as they were called, were universally despised by prisoners and the security services alike. In many cases they didn't have a choice when they were recruited; Solzhenitsyn himself was forced to become an informant. He considered himself very fortunate to have been transferred out to a sharashka (science lab in the gulag system) before internal security could really pressure him into snitching on overheard conversations.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_91672d3e	type	Children Are Innocent
The Gulag Archipelago / int_91672d3e	comment	Children Are Innocent: Not in the view of the state, they're not; they can get shipped off to the gulag like any adult. Once there, Solzhenitsyn notes that their very innocence makes them extremely dangerous, as they adapt to their new environment far faster than an adult with more deeply entrenched moral convictions. See Kids Are Cruel below.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_984ef9ef	type	"Not So Different" Remark
The Gulag Archipelago / int_984ef9ef	comment	"Not So Different" Remark: Solzhenitsyn recalls how he started to become haughty and cruel as an officer and concludes that under the right circumstances, most people could become brutal interrogators.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_984ef9ef	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_986bd638	type	This Is a Work of Fiction
The Gulag Archipelago / int_986bd638	comment	This Is a Work of Fiction: Inverted. The book has a disclaimer at the beginning, saying that while many names have been changed, everything in it really happened exactly like it's described. How true that actually is is subject to dispute.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_a084f0e0	type	Never Speak Ill of the Dead
The Gulag Archipelago / int_a084f0e0	comment	Never Speak Ill of the Dead: One of the objections to the original publication of the book was that Solzhenitsyn was disgracing the memory of the dead. He was even accused of pointlessly opening the old wounds of the camp survivors, by former camp guards, no less.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_a084f0e0	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_a24670a4	type	Benevolent Boss
The Gulag Archipelago / int_a24670a4	comment	Benevolent Boss: ...But there were a few managers and guards who kept their human decency.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_a8af3e53	type	Secret Police
The Gulag Archipelago / int_a8af3e53	comment	Secret Police: The NKVD, or "Blue Caps" as they are more commonly referred to in the book. They are described as men who are totally obedient to the Party and feel little to no empathy towards others, endowed with what essentially amounts to unlimited power. Nobody was out of their reach, from the lowest farmer, to ranking government or military officials. So long as they didn't go against their fellow Blue Caps or the state, they could do pretty much anything they wanted; which they did. A school professor is giving a lecture on something you don't like? You can forbid him from saying anything else. You saw an apartment that you would like to live in? You could have it, and if it happens to already be occupied, just throw the tenant into a cell on whatever charge comes to mind. A woman catches your eye? She's yours, so go ahead and rape her.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_a8af3e53	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_ae3d6438	type	Deadpan Snarker
The Gulag Archipelago / int_ae3d6438	comment	Deadpan Snarker: The narration of the arbitrariness of the regime is full of dry humor and sometimes the absurdism borders on Black Comedy (see above).
The Gulag Archipelago / int_ae3d6438	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_b42b7e7b	type	Moral Myopia
The Gulag Archipelago / int_b42b7e7b	comment	Moral Myopia: Stalin's regime never misses a chance to rant about the (admittedly dreadful) purges of the Tsars, even with the even more massive purges they themselves stage.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_b42b7e7b	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_b53077b3	type	Take That!
The Gulag Archipelago / int_b53077b3	comment	Take That!: Aimed at communist officials and policies, mostly Soviet but a few in the West too, b(at least three to Bertrand Russell, for instance) sympathetic with the Soviet Union (though Russell criticized the USSR and Marxism, so he may have been misinformed about that).
The Gulag Archipelago / int_b53077b3	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_bf455b89	type	Interrogated for Nothing
The Gulag Archipelago / int_bf455b89	comment	Interrogated for Nothing: Frequently followed by a Tenner For Nothing.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_c19bdbe1	type	Good Cop/Bad Cop
The Gulag Archipelago / int_c19bdbe1	comment	Good Cop/Bad Cop: One of the many, many techniques used by the gulag interrogators. Rather effectively, too.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_c19bdbe1	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_c5f0119c	type	Insane Troll Logic
The Gulag Archipelago / int_c5f0119c	comment	Insane Troll Logic: Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code, which was so broadly written that it could easily cover any sort of unapproved behavior.
The Gulag Archipelago / int_c5f0119c	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_d1ceb951	type	Holier Than Thou
The Gulag Archipelago / int_d1ceb951	comment	Holier Than Thou: Many of the Communist prisoners being purged still think themselves loyal to Stalin's regime, convinced that it was all a mistake that they were arrested, whereas everybody around them are of course scum and deserve every moment of their sentence.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_d397657d	type	Hoist by His Own Petard
The Gulag Archipelago / int_d397657d	comment	Hoist by His Own Petard: Nobody was completely safe from purges, even those who had orchestrated previous purges from the highest echelons of Soviet society e.g. the 1938 show trial of Yagoda (former head of the NKVD, who had supervised the Moscow Show Trials of 1936 and '37), Bukharin, Rykov, and other high-ranking officials. His successor Beria got hit with this himself after Stalin's death.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_d45c0b86	type	Refuge in Audacity
The Gulag Archipelago / int_d45c0b86	comment	Refuge in Audacity: The book contains a few examples both of people standing up to the guards and inexplicably not being punished, and examples of total farce that should have exposed the whole hideous affair but the guards successfully bluffed their way through.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_dcdde3b	type	Inherent in the System
The Gulag Archipelago / int_dcdde3b	comment	Inherent in the System: Solzhenitsyn makes it very clear that the gulags were no abberration of Stalin: from the very beginning, communism only survives through the terror and oppression of the people.
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The Gulag Archipelago / int_dd082289	type	A Million Is a Statistic
The Gulag Archipelago / int_dd082289	comment	A Million Is a Statistic: The author laments that the numbers he's dealing with are simply too immense to leave an emotional impact. To give you some perspective, Solzhenitsyn's estimates of the total death toll under Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev combined have margins of error numbering in the tens of millions.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Gulag Archipelago	hasFeature	Jerk Justifications / int_3b270805
The Gulag Archipelago	hasFeature	The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People / int_3b270805
The Gulag Archipelago	seeAlso	The Gulag Archipelago

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