/lit/ - Literature

It's garbage. It's a compendium of rumors and exaggerations misinterpreted as factual accounts. His wife says this explicitly in her memoir. There are very real criticisms to be made against communism but this book is as ridiculous as holocaust rollercoasters where women who steal a spool of thread are sent to a prison camp for 10 years. It's bullshit. Jordan Peterson is a fucking moron for recommending this book and ever since I opened it I've hated that bastard idiot.

>>17095163
For me it's Cancer Ward

>>17095163
It has the association of being a gateway drug to full retardation. Just get him Maps of Meaning, skip the gateway.

>>17095176
There's very decent insights into human nature and criticism of Marxism throughout the book. A decent eighth of the book is about living in Stalinist Russia, and how it became that way with the silent approval of the masses. You can dismiss its claims regarding the Gulags if you wish, but there's a lot more to the book than that.

>>17095176
I agree that some of it is obvious bullshit however like the Holocaust it did happen and while there is obviously bullshit the incredible amount of lives destroyed is terrifying

>>17095176
The American is talking! Let's all shut up and listen to his wonderful insight of soviet union, you know he has an old militsiya hat displayed on his book shelf. Sure there's 3 volumes on one of the darkest times in human history, but how could it possibly compare to him having to wear a mast to get his chicken nuggets every day, he surely knows more about suffering that anyone else.
Retard.

Get him Kolyma Tales instead, that we he won't be accosted by seething commie larpers telling him it's all fake.

>>17099044
Based as fuck. Listen to this anon -- Shalamov is amazing. If you want other gulag-related lit, try "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead."

>>17095176
The thing about his wife was an obvious psyop

>>17099044
Does the Penguin edition contain all of them?

>>17095176
Why do you people come here

>>17095163
A book is a terrible gift. you basically gifting him a chore. Even if he reads alot, in which case he probably has already read it. Exception would be a cool hardcover edition maybe.
And if you have to ask if it's too dry for him then the answer is definitely too dry

>>17095176
I wonder how large the overlapping set is of people who both disbelieve this book and also disbelieve holocaust accounts

Go for a WW2 book, dads love WW2

>>17095163
>Hey Pops, gommunism bad amirte?
>All I wanted for Christmas is for my son to stop being a radicalised loser

>>17095163
I'd recommend heaven on earth - rise fall and aftermath of socialism. it's more focused on the history of the idea of a worldly utopia where are men are equal, and it nails the analysis of why that ideal falls flat.

I was planning on reading this next year. If it’s anything like One Day in the Life of Ivan then it should be a comfy read.

>>17100471
>Disliking communism makes you a fascist
/leftypol/ is an abortion

Somebody else read Shalamov who's amazing
I'll also recommend Mochulsky for the "gulag manager" perspective on the whole affair
He manages to be horrified and completely casual about the whole thing at the same time, it's hilarious

Get him a box of cigars and liquor

>>17095163
Get him a gun so he can shoot himself for having a gay son

Several hundred million people were killed by communism in the 20th century, and yet people will tell you that the black book and Solzhenitsyn made it all up.
If there's one event that was made up, it was the Holocaust. Simple as that.

>>17100471
>>All I wanted for Christmas is for my son to stop being a radicalised loser
Yeah, whereas if his son was radicalized in the other direction (like you), he'd be a raging tranny. A father's dream. Cattlen*gger retard.

>>17095176
Jordan and that navy seal cunt were so hot about this book, luckily I did my research and found out it’s exaggerated to death and most of the shit the author wrote was fictional shit and hearsay

>>17101250
He doesn't drink or smoke

>>17101446
I can't buy guns here

>>17095176
go away commie shill

>>17100471
Communism is garbage you midwit

17097495
>like the Holocaust it did happen
I've been wondering about that.

>>17097495
>like the Holocaust it did happen
I've been wondering about that.

>>17095876
if 7/8ths of a book is bullshit then its a bullshit book

Get him a collection of Solzhenitsyn's novels instead. He's a genuinely great writer but The Gulag Archipelago is not a great reading experience.

>>17095163
Every single word of The Gulag Archipelago is completely factual and anybody that says otherwise is a paranoid schizophrenic communist homosexual liar.

Also, the holocaust was the fault of the allies and as well it was heavily exaggerated.

If your dad didn't ask for it, don't give it to him. It's dense, not at all entertaining, and frankly horrifying.

>>17095176
So tiring

>>17095188
I thought I was the only person on /lit/ who'd read that.
Are you saying it's dry? I found it peak comfy.

>>17100419
I have a rule: if I give someone a book, I never ask if they have read it. I tell the recipient this before giving the book.

It's not dry for a Russian doorstopper. He's a great writer and the book just sort of luls you into a plodding, nonstop trance. Book 2 is better but 3 has the resolution.

>>17103995
Loser

>>17095176
>>17095206
>>17097495
>>17100471
>>17100544
>>17101838
>>17103040
>>17103041
>>17103078
Have any of you actually read the book?

>>17095163
Just get the abridged it was very good

>>17104045
Yes, why would I comment on a book I haven't read?

>>17104045
I have red the abridged version which everyone should read as the 3 part version is too much bloat.

It’s a fantastic book. Despite the numbers being off the shit that he explains DID fucking happen and the message is still just as important.

>>17104045
I watched a YouTube vid of a guy debunking it.

>>17095176

>>17103995
>I thought I was the only person on /lit/ who'd read that.
I've read it as well, you obviously underestimate how well read /lit/ is.

>>17104045
8 times

>>17095163
>>17095176
So I don't mean this to be particularly partisan. The Soviet Union might have committed lots of awful crimes, but whatever it did or didn't do is not contained in the Gulag Archipelago.

A Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one thing. We can sum that up with "oh fuck that's a hard life being a prisoner in this shit camp". But when you look at the details of Solzhenitsyn's life it's hard to take him seriously.

For a start, he was a WWII officer and got sent to the gulag for writing letters containing military details. This would get you sent to Fort Leavenworth, Colchester, Holsworthy etc. today. For a second, ever notice how his other book is "The Cancer Ward"? He actually got quite effective medical care, for cancer, while in a camp, while on every other page it's all about "oh no they didn't care about the prisoners, life is cheap" and so on. Which one is it then? The final point is that (and yeah Stalinism was fucked up and awful) he did after all get permission to publish a bunch of his work under Khrushchev, was allowed to leave the country and accept prizes. So was it an awful totalitarian dictatorship that allows no publication, or was it something a bit more complicated? Of course it can't be the one-note vision presented in Gulag Archipelago, there has to be a lot more detail than these death camps where they'll work you to death one minute but give you intensive cancer treatment the next, ban you from publishing one minute and let you be an internally and internationally published author the next.

>>17100453
there's 0 overlap, because people who disbelieve the book are communists

>>17101866
which part and which story was exaggerated to death??

>>17095176
But the Soviet Union wasn't communist so why are you even talking about that, or GA in terms of it being a critique of communism, when it reads much more like a POW memoir? Your post is weird.

>>17105097
>they'll work you to death one minute but give you intensive cancer treatment the next
Gulag archipelago is a collection of accounts from.. Well.. The Gulag Archipelago. Obviously not everyone got treatment they needed and not everyone got worked to death. It was a shitshow.
And if you accept that medical treatment was effective, then why not accept that all those other horrible things he wrote in Gulag Archipelago were true?
To suggest that in that time he should have showed more of the positives of the gulags is fucking retarded and if anyone tries to do it he's a commie cuck

>>17105097
You haven't read the book

>>17105097
>>17106130
People who shill this aren't interested in critical engagement, they're reading it because Dr Benzo-lobster-cuck recommended it and they want to secure themselves in their own simplistic world view (billionaires, meanwhile, rub their hands with glee at another rube taken in.)

>>17105699
If soviet union isnt communist then communism is fundamentally impossible and therefore will never exist

>>17106167
Why do you want a world where every 3rd man is a snitch for the KGB and the result is 10 years minimum in what is at best hard labor and at worst death from malnutrition and weather? What about the social contract? How can you deny the inhumanity of this?

I work with a russian jewish family who survived in soviet ukraine during the worst eras of communism(the parents are in their mid 80s) and they tell me that every word of this book is true. They are intellectuals and run a private library.

>>17106198
Exactly. So we can finish having these turgid "discussions" and get back to talking about how misanthropic the USSR systemically was.

>>17106222
Please say the phrase "Karl Marx's dream will never exist in even an unlimited amount of Universes".

>>17106234
Karl Marx's dream will never exist in even an unlimited amount of Universes

>>17106244
Based. We may now continue.