The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
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The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Audible Audiobook – Abridged

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 968 ratings
#1 Best Seller in Human Rights Law
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"Best Nonfiction Book of the 20th Century" (Time)

“It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late 20th century.” (David Remnick, The New Yorker)

The Nobel Prize winner’s towering masterpiece of world literature, the searing record of four decades of terror and oppression, in one abridged volume (authorized by the author). Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.

Drawing on his own experiences before, during, and after his 11 years of incarceration and exile, on evidence provided by more than 200 fellow prisoners, and on Soviet archives, Solzhenitsyn reveals with torrential narrative and dramatic power the entire apparatus of Soviet repression, the state within the state that once ruled all-powerfully with its creation by Lenin in 1918. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims - this man, that woman, that child - we encounter the secret police operations, the labor camps and prisons, the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the “welcome” that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Yet we also witness astounding moral courage, the incorruptibility with which the occasional individual or a few scattered groups, all defenseless, endured brutality and degradation. And Solzhenitsyn’s genius has transmuted this grisly indictment into a literary miracle.

“The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever leveled in modern times.” (George F. Kennan)

“Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece.... The Gulag Archipelago helped create the world we live in today.” (Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, from the foreword)

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  1. Listening Length
    21 hours and 53 minutes
  2. Author
    Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
  3. Narrator
    Ignat Solzhenitsyn
  4. Audible release date
    October 13, 2020
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    HarperAudio
  7. ASIN
    B07WX3FYWS
  8. Version
    Abridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 21 hours and 53 minutes
Author Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Narrator Ignat Solzhenitsyn
Audible.com Release Date October 13, 2020
Publisher HarperAudio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Abridged
Language English
ASIN B07WX3FYWS
Best Sellers Rank #2,239 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#1 in Human Rights (Audible Books & Originals)
#1 in Human Rights Law (Books)
#1 in Communism & Socialism (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
968 global ratings
Ripped cover
5 Stars
Ripped cover
The book is great so im still giving a 5 star but when it came it had a rip on the cover. Not a big deal but worth noteing..
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Top reviews from the United States

Francisco A.
5.0 out of 5 stars One the most important novels of the 20th century
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2024
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This is the book that truly shows what communism can do to a nation. Honestly, a novel that should be read by everyone and recommended to be introduced to students in high school.
7 people found this helpful
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K. Johns
5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly timeless
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2023
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It is easy to live in a safe bubble and to think these things could never happen "here." It is important to see that they can and in some ways already have.
12 people found this helpful
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TC Kurtz
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2023
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After the Bible and The Brothers Karamasov, one must read to understand the monster of Leftism. An education is not complete without understanding the most profound evil of the 20th century.
8 people found this helpful
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Charles P. Miller
5.0 out of 5 stars The line between good and evil runs down every human heart
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2018
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Already knew a lot of this history but Gulag is on Jordan Peterson's reading list so.... Gulag is not the story of Aleksandr Solzhenitsy, nor is it a history book- it is much more than that. The real value, and I think a main reason its on JP's list, is in the underlying message that this is not the story of Russia, or the Russian people, or Stalin- or anyone- but of everyone. Every single one of us, every day, in ways big and small, acts in ways that serve to bring forth either a better world, or the hell of the Gulag Archipelago. Be warned, this is some very unpleasant reading. No one wants to think of being imprisoned indefinitely in a "cell" too small even to sit or lie down in, let alone in one with so many bedbugs they are falling off the ceiling and crawling from everywhere, so many you cannot kill them all even if you could stomach the stench. But it will be worth it to absorb the lesson that this is the cost and end result of lies. Speak the truth. At whatever cost. If you want to know how high the cost of lies can be, read the Gulag Archipelago.
115 people found this helpful
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eastcoast_joe
4.0 out of 5 stars This was an interesting and detailed read my only problem ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2017
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This was an interesting and detailed read my only problem is they cut out most of the personal stories I was getting into most. A little dry at times and there is very little about it that is uplifting, but it is an important book that I got a lot out of, I just wish it was edited differently.
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Sailsman
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2018
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What communists did to Russians was as bad or worse than what Nazis did to Jews.

I would add this practical piece of advice: Solzyenitsyn points out that almost all the people hauled away to the Gulag were done so not via forced round-ups of many people at once, but by being picked off by the security forces one by one. In other words, you, the victim, would be stopped in the street, the office, school or in his apartment/flat by one or two men with a car waiting nearby and told, sometimes even politely asked, to "come with us" (remember the scene in Godfather I when Tom Hagen was stopped by "the Turk" while exiting a store after X-Mass shopping and quietly told to "get in the car"?). And you'd go. This method has the virtue of being relatively quiet and hard to notice so that no would be rescuers really noticed the incident and no crowd would ever gather. You went quietly into the night.

So, the advice? Always make a BIG stink if anyone tries to take you away. A crowd will gather or someone will record the incident with a phone, perhaps even intervene. Thats your best hope. Someone has to see and bear witness.
64 people found this helpful
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matthew warren
5.0 out of 5 stars alexandr solzhenitsyn really nails it.
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2018
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this personal account has begun to help me understand my own capacity for evil. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn says 'The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man' i think it has helped me recognize the types of things i have to do to spot evil thoughts and to know how to contend with them. the things i read in this book have made me sick, such that i think about the gulags often. i think about how people starved to death and how they lived or survived by labor or being a 'stoolie'. Despite the horrors of this book i think it has made me a better person. it will make you one as well. please buy this book for your own sake and sakes of those you love.
19 people found this helpful
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M. A. Seifter
5.0 out of 5 stars An autobiography in hell
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2020
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Solzhenitsyn's autobiography of his experience in the Soviet slave labor camps, an "experiment in literary investigation", stands as a thundering condemnation of the entire rotten enterprise of Bolshevik-Soviet Communism. A great book, which opened tsunamis of controversy and adulation when it was first published, it was abridged magnificently in the 1980s, with the author's full endorsement, losing none of its original titanic force. Anyone and everyone today who would like to understand how and, maybe why a government that promised human liberation, equality and emancipation would begin to enslave its own people, and to consign them to the nothingness of savage internment in remote slave camps where human life was worth nothing at all should read, and re-read this magnificent book.
21 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Rye P
5.0 out of 5 stars mind bending
Reviewed in Canada on April 26, 2024
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it’s…just read it.
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Patricia Medina
5.0 out of 5 stars ¡Una de las atrocidades más grandes de todos los tiempos!
Reviewed in Mexico on March 13, 2022
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Si queremos preservar y alquilatar la libertad, este libro es obligado. ¡Cuánta crueldad y destrucción de un pueblo hacia su propio pueblo! La genialidad de Solzhenitsyn de recordar lo que vivió, nombres, fechas, incidentes, detalles, y salir a escribirlos, buscar testimonios y dar a conocer la mons
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P.F.C.
5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed and literally bloody destructive account of the communist ideology.
Reviewed in Italy on February 14, 2021
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The book is well written, detailing the most important parts and happenings of the arrests, trials and days in the gulag where people where treated as bad as the jews in the concentracion camps or even worse in some cases. The book also details how even the exiles didn't find any peace and weren't treated any better. Pointless executions and killings, including children (who were also arrested and put into gulags) are written in the book in a painstakingly and heart bending manner for the writer who seems to write with an anguish, anger and an heart full of pain for all the unnecessary killings, arrests and persecutions aimed at groups, sometimes purely, sorely and entirely because certain individuals belonged to a certain group (kulaks). Reccomended to read if you don't or can't read the three original volumes, that are also reccomended and that display the whole communist dealings in full detail.
One person found this helpful
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CG
5.0 out of 5 stars Impactante
Reviewed in Brazil on November 23, 2019
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Apesar de ser uma versão resumida, serve suficientemente bem ao propósito de fazer-nos acordar para promessas de paraíso na terra através de governos. Capítulos de revirar o estômago e fazer com que se perca o sono ao ir dormir; e o pior de tudo é que não estão sendo narrados relatos fantasiosos, mas situações reais de várias pessoas cujo único crime foi se recusar a compactuar com o inaceitável. É um relato que infelizmente não foi realizado um trabalho de tradução aqui para o Brasil, país onde é extremamente útil a reflexão acerca destes relatos em vista de tanta admiração por figuras que tanto sofrimento causaram a pessoas inocentes.
5 people found this helpful
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J A
5.0 out of 5 stars Mandatory reading for the current generation
Reviewed in Spain on September 24, 2020
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Mandatory reading for understanding the danger of collectivist ideologies. The book is challenging but rewarding.
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