Applebaum's Gulag

There's a long queue of books patiently waiting for me to pick them up and typically I allow no jumping it, but this rule of thumb has been overwhelmed by Anne Applebaum's Gulag. Her detailed research into the Soviet system of forced labour, pieced together from survivors' memoirs, official documents and interviews, may not be eye-opening for readers in Eastern Europe, well aware of what had happened, but certainly broke ground as a major work on the camps by an American writer for English speakers. Told in a chronological order, it clearly charts the events that led to the rise of the gulag, with political and ideological motivations openly discussed, its mechanisms of exploitation and extermination, and - finally - its slow and convulsed demise after Stalin's death in 1952.

Step by step, Applebaum ushers her readers in the cruel and paradoxical world of the Soviet gulags. She goes over their gigantic engineering enterprises, like the White Sea Canal erected by the inmates of the Solovki camp on the Solovetsky islands, that claimed thousands of lives but contributed little in terms of functionality and efficacy of infrastructure. Similarly, forced labourers deported to the steppes of Kazakhsttan or Siberian wilderness were often driven to participate in wasteful, badly managed projects, out of touch with their powers or skills. Probing more deeply into the everyday reality of the camps, Applebaum strives to bring some systematicity to these inherently chaotic and underorganized complexes and lays out their daily routines, organization or hierarchies. Trying to retain the richness and variety of experiences, she quotes extensively from available sources, mostly memoirs, like Herling-Grudziński's A World Apart or Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. Throughout the book, she tries to keep her eyes on what had inspired decisions to incarcerate millions of Soviet citizens and foreigners, as multipe waves of variously, and often randomly, motivated arrests swept through the vast country.

For me, it was the two essays - one opening the book and one concluding it - that stood out as proof of Applebaum's expertise and insight that stretches from her historical knowledge to her acute understanding and analysis of, first, modern Russia and, second, the state of public awareness of the gulag. In the opening essay, she masterfully dissects the Western memory and the reasons why the Soviet camps haven't attained the same revered place as the Holocaust in it. In the closing remarks, Applebaum bravely casts the gulag's shadow over modern Russia, seeing its political elites as continuators and perpetuators of the same spirit of denial, disrespect for individual dignity and tyranny.

Some terms to remember:
1) ration cards,
2) an infirmary = a hospital,
3) a louse (lice) = wszy,
4) buckwheat = kasza gryczana, here buckwheat porridge,
5) crockery = tableware - dishware,
6) the heel of a loaf,
7) felt (filcowe) boots,
8) to put on a look of incomprehension,
9) to browbeat - to intimidate,
10) the roll-call is calling out names to verify attendance,
11) alacrity = eagerness,
12) to move one's bowels = to defecate,
13) parquet floors,
14) a smokestack = a chimney,
15) emaciated = wasted away physically,
16) to play up to the bosses,
17) Serves him right!
18) a spyhole = a peephole,
19) Lend-lease programme,
20) feel compunction (strong uneasiness caused by guilt)