
The Gulag Archipelago
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Narrated by:
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Jordan B. Peterson
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Ignat Solzhenitsyn
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
The audiobook edition of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, read by the author's son, Ignat Solzhenitsyn.
With a new foreword written and read by Jordan B. Peterson, and an exclusive Q&A between Jordan B. Peterson and Ignat Solzhenitsyn.
The officially approved abridgement of The Gulag Archipelago Volumes I, II & III.
A vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators but also of everyday heroism, The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's grand masterwork. Based on the testimony of some 200 survivors, and on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn's own 11 years in labour camps and exile, it chronicles the story of those at the heart of the Soviet Union who opposed Stalin, and for whom the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair.
A thoroughly researched document and a feat of literary and imaginative power, this edition of The Gulag Archipelago was abridged into one volume at the author's wish and with his full co-operation.
Critic reviews
"Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece.... The Gulag Archipelago helped create the world we live in today." (Anne Applebaum)
"[The Gulag Archipelago] helped to bring down an empire. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated." (Doris Lessing, Sunday Telegraph)
Profoundly deep
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The narrator dances through the reading with style and personality.
A truly fascinating book.
Remarkable book and a sublime performance.
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Eye opening
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The author picks apart the inexhaustible and creative evil that mankind is capable of, given the fatalistic excuse of a wretched ideology.
I am convinced that this audiobook has changed my perspective on Marxism, and has left me in contempt against the dangers of ideological possession.
A Glimpse Into The Unbounded Malevolence Of Man
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A real true adventure with great narration
Testing these men to the most extreme elements that nature could throw at them.
Great Detail
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An important book.
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Composed through immense difficulty, Solzhenitsyn speaks about memorising by rote 12000 lines of his book in the gulag, where writing it down would have been foolish, and using a 50 bead rosary to practice it.
With the description of the dehumanising system of exploitation (that he's estimates cannot have been profitable economically for the state) where the death rates could be as high as 1% per day and survival at all costs meant at the cost of other's lives "you die today, I'll die tomorrow" the book contains an optimistic view of what may happen, the human spirit and the capacity to grow in adverse situations.
The paranoia of Stalin and the party is palpable through the actions of constantly higher quotas for arrested "politicals" the 58s, named after the political article in the criminal code. This includes not only arrest and hard labour for being denounced (by one enemy or by your husband's mistress) but a whole office for one act of graffiti, or the prisoners of war (how POWs can be traitors is rhetorically asked). And the Organs (how the secret police NKVD or blue caps describe themselves) have to continually raise quotas in order to justify their existence.
There's a foreword by Jordan Peterson that's a bit out of place, an abridgement should make the work shorter and increasing the length with Peterson's interpretation (that the book is solely about how bad communism is and always will be) it's a gross oversimplification at best and an attempt to score political points at worst, expanding outside of Russia to Venezuela and other communist system to rant about the evils of any ideology "not born out of religion" is not supported by the text, Solzhenitsyn himself states "let any reader who thinks this us a political expose slam its covers shut". I'd suggest skipping this section to move onto the less opinionated foreword of the editor and Solzhenitsyn's collaborator on the Abridgement.
Solzhenitsyn made it his life's work to publicise the atrocities and ensure that no matter the censors' erasures or people's cries not to "open old wounds" (the wounds mostly being inflicted by them) the Russian people would know at least part of the gulag truth.
Bleak look at the worst sides of human nature
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the real horror of this book is the observation that we could so easily be them. how then will you deal with this reality (sin) in your own life?
the antagonism between Marxism and authentic Christianity (ie not much of what you see in the West today) is because Marxism is a counterfeit reality and in Christianity it is confronted with absolute truth - as Solzenitsin knew. We are seeing this struggle playing out again in our own time in global elitism and it's growing structures and laws (interestingly it owes much to Carl Jung, who seems to be much respected by Mr Peterson)
counterfeit Vs real
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Needs to be heard!
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An important look into the darkest part of history
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