The Gulag Archipelago - Book Review

Hey all, I made a satirical video review of Gulag Archipelago a while ago for my Youtube channel that I ended up deleting once I decided to commit to a more somber, straightforward approach to the channel. I wrote a serious review at the time because I had thoughts that didn't fit in a satire format that I wanted to share, so I thought I'd share them here. So here's my serious review:

The Gulag Archipelago works on two levels: as a polemic against the atrocities the Soviet Union committed against their own people, and as a study of how society can turn mad. I’m particularly drawn to the conceptual nature of the latter point. Solzhenitsyn believed that every human being is capable of evil under the right circumstances (his thesis: ’The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being’). Therefore, all societies are capable of evil, and are incapable of eliminating the potential for evil, since no one wants to remove (or is even able to remove) a piece of their own heart.

Solzhenitsyn thought the Soviet Union went so wrong because it set up an inverse relationship between reward and moral character: incentivizing evil and disincentivizing good. Stalin and his Party trained people to submissively go along with the atrocities they were committing. If you kept your head down and your mouth shut, there was a good chance you’d be left alone. If you leaned into moral courage and resisted in some way, you’d be punished with torture, hard labor, and in many cases execution. The party officials willing to commit the worst atrocities were rewarded handsomely and enjoyed immense power over prisoners and the rest of society.

Solzhenitsyn also thought Marxism itself had much to do with it, since Marxism is a philosophy that wraps itself in moral righteousness. He thought that Stalin truly believed that he was doing good, and that set the stage for political horror. If someone is utterly convinced that they’re ultimately on the side of good, they might be especially willing to commit what they see as temporary atrocities to reach long term utopian goals.

I felt an urge throughout to apply these ideas to American society. On one hand the comparison feels absurd. But the basic comparison does work, or at least I think it must work on some level. In some ways immoral behavior is certainly incentivized in fields like business, finance, perhaps media and politics (i.e. the fields that bring you power), but I’m not sure about moral behavior being disincentivized. Maybe that’s our saving grace. A society can function with immoral behavior, but a society can’t function if moral behavior can’t rise to counter, or even overcome it.

As to the second point, I think the moral blindness that comes along with feelings of righteousness could be applied to our foreign policy decisions, but I think it’s even more salient at lower levels - the dynamics within movements and the dynamics within our own minds. It makes me think of the heroic figures of our past who have taught us that we shouldn't temporarily sacrifice our principles for higher goals. Doing that comes at the cost of moral authority, and that’s when the whole thing starts going sideways, impeding the progress of movements and blemishing the character of those involved.

Back to the book. The Gulag Archipelago isn’t for the faint hearted and will likely make you feel more alive having read it. Is that a recommendation? I suppose so. I, and probably most people aware of the book, held off reading it for a long time because of its length. If you’re on the fence about reading it, I’d say (some will cringe at this) you could read certain chapters and still come away with the gist of what’s on offer. Those chapters are: Arrest, The History Of Our Sewage Disposal System, The Interrogation, The Bluecaps, First Cell First Love, Women In Camp, The Kids, Why Did We Stand For It?, and The Law Today. Obviously reading the entire book will give you a more thorough picture of what he was trying to say. So make of that what you will.

- Ryan