Context

The content of the book reveals to us both of just how far a society can go into the realm of evil as well as the psychological characteristics at play in an oppressive system. The word “Gulag” was short for “Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei… the institution which ran the Soviet camps… over time, the word has also come to signify the system of Soviet slave labour itself, in all its forms and varieties: labour camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women’s camps, children’s camps, transit camps.”[1] The gulag system was in no doubt the epitome of Soviet oppression, short of mass executions. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn work was powerful as it relates the gravity of the situation to the reader. In the very first chapter, Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Each of us is the center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you, "You are under arrest."”[2] Those words, in essence, was a death sentence. Your belongings either remained with those in your family if they were not themselves arrested as well. Otherwise, they would be confiscated. You would be sent to an undisclosed location to serve an indefinite sentence and face harsh conditions. Your innocence was irrelevant. Initially, Stalin just rounded up political opponents, however eventually, Stalin would round up people at random, either to meet the quota of some Gulags or to ensure his reign of terror continued, the fact of the matter was, that no one was safe. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn perplexed at the level of compliance that which the individual had played in these acts. Solzhenitsyn contemplated; “what would things have been like if… during periods of mass arrests… people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had… set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?”[3] The emphasis was that most Russians knew that something wrong was happening whether it was the NKVD officer, the red army soldier, the citizen, the commanders, the intellectuals, and yet everyone was compliant because of a  fear for their survival. Fear, therefore, had no limit to the extent of evil that it was willing to go. Solzhenitsyn deliberates that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”[4] In conclusion, The Gulag Archipelago perhaps best resonated with its audience because, as much as we would like to think that we might take a stance, that if it were “I” things would be different, that “I” would play the archetypical hero. The reality of the situation is that most of us would quiver in fear as cowards hoping the next door knocked wouldn’t be ours, with the words hissed “you’re under arrest.”