What do I read to give me better context and framing to read The Gulag Archipelago?

[Anonymous No.18415502]

[Anonymous No.18415514]

>>18415502
>He needs to read extra material to get a better understanding.
What a pseud.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18415533]

Isn’t there old Soviet records released that contradict some of this books claims?

[Anonymous No.18415535]

>>18415514
No, the mark of a psued is to think he can understand every complicated topic simply because he deemed himself intelligent. Contribute or fuck off, your opinions are shallow and boring and only serve to advertise your limited scope of understanding..

[Anonymous No.18415569]

>>18415535
>Getting this defensive after being called a pseud
You never fail to disappoint, pseuds.

[Anonymous No.18415584]

>>18415502
isnt this CIA propaganda?

[Anonymous No.18415592]

>>18415514
>>18415569
>context doesnt' matter
Fucking pseud

[Anonymous No.18415604]

>>18415584
No, it’s CIA propaganda to call it CIA propaganda. The Central Imbecile Agency is a commie tranny circlejerk

[Anonymous No.18415606]

>>18415584
Why do you say that?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18415613]

>>18415604
Trump lost. Biden isn’t leftwing in the slightest

[Anonymous No.18415635]

>>18415502
I have yet to read it, but to give some context, Sasha is an Orthodox Christian and a Russian Nationalist, that is, an antisemite. In this context, he opposes "Western-style democracy" and he doesn't believe that Holodomor was a genocide (one of the few things he got right btw). Keep in mind that his book is not meant to be factually accurate, it's a political manifesto.

All in all, it wouldn't be bad to read some history/literature of pre-revolutionary Russia to understand where Sasha comes from, what he wanted his country to look like. First that comes to mind is Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead"

[Anonymous No.18415638]

>>18415584
Not really, in the sense that it wasn't written by them
>>18415604
>it’s CIA propaganda to call it CIA propaganda
Chto

[Anonymous No.18415646]

>>18415613
just out of curiosity what does "slightly" left wing look like to you? it feels like commies get defensive about anything right of seizing the means of production being refereed to as left wing

[Anonymous No.18415697]

>>18415635
Thanks for the recommendation. It seems like a challenging book to orient effectively but worth a read if nothing else.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18415731]

>>18415646
I go on about the Leftism of anti-capitalism, but if we must confine ourselves to the pro-capitalist side, a slightly left liberal is for reforming the rapacious features that come with market economics. Bernie Sanders is only a hallowed stooge of the system he probably once wanted to reform. He pays lip service to progressive ideas, but fools around at trying to implement any of it.
Biden/Harris are pro slavery, pro MIC, shitlibs.

[Anonymous No.18415735]

>>18415697
>It seems like a challenging book to orient effectively
I'm not sure what you mean with "orient" in this context. It's not a very large book, quite the opposite (way shorter than basically anything else from him, except "Notes from underground). There isn't even a real. complex plot, it's just everyday life in the katorga and reflections about it and the people he met. You can easily find it for free on the internet in whatever language, and for cheap in any second hand bookshop.

[Anonymous No.18415746]

>>18415635
> Sasha is an Orthodox Christian and a Russian Nationalist, that is, an antisemite.
Is this supposed to be a bad thing?

[Anonymous No.18415753]

>>18415746
You decide. I was only stating objective facts.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18415755]

>>18415746
Nationalism is a bad thing, but do what you will

[Anonymous No.18415767]

>>18415731
ok, now can you answer the question instead of going full schitzo rant about democrats?

[Anonymous No.18415768]

>>18415753
You were equating being an orthodox christian and a russian nationalist with being an antisemite, and using the term as an epithet to belittle the works of the author. It is unresponsible to say you weren't doing this at bad faith.

[Anonymous No.18415779]

>>18415735
orient in the sense of context. Firstly it covers a hundred years of history "factually" which is hard to verify given the almost endless information war the soviets fought not only against its own people but public perception of the regime (many of its effects are still felt today). Its hard to orient in the sense that every "intellectual" who prostituted themselves to soviet ideology had some stake in showing soviet brutality in a positive light as well as being by someone who had everything to gain by pushing his own anti-soviet ideals.

[Anonymous No.18415792]

>>18415768
>You were equating being an orthodox christian and a russian nationalist with being an antisemite
Because it literally is
>and using the term as an epithet to belittle the works of the author.
Assuming
>It is unresponsible to say you weren't doing this at bad faith.
Keep your moral judgement for yourself. OP asked for context on how to read that book, and I provided him some. Try discussing the content instead of my supposed "goals"

Consider this: this site has no lack of nationalist/anticommunist/antisemite people. And usually, the narrative you hear from them is "Holodomor was a genocide against white people made by juice! But nobody ever says that! Because the juice dindu nuffin wrong!"
And now you have nationalist/anticommunist/antisemite dude saying that the "Holodomor" did happen, was intentional, and it wasn't a genocide. You see? That's way more complex than your basic 4chan, triggered, reaction.

I'm not sure you care, but I'll say it anyway: I've been called both a joo (by antisemites) and an antisemite (by joos), and I am neither.

[Anonymous No.18415804]

>>18415635
"In accordance with a decree of the USSR Supreme Court of 1 August 1942 and the
joint directive of the NKVD, Narkomyust and the Procuracy of 23 October 1942
resulting from it, prisoners suffering from incurable diseases were to be released from
their places of detention. In accordance with a list of incurable conditions, approved
by the head of the Gulag, people were to be freed if they suffered from ‘emaciation
as a result of avitaminosis’ (this was a bureaucratic expression for starvation),
‘alimentary distrophy’ (this was another bureaucratic expression for starvation),
leukaemia, malignant anaemia, decompressed tuberculosis of the lungs, open bacilliary tuberculosis of the lungs, acute amphysemna of the lungs etc. As Isupov sensibly
notes, ‘In other words, the prisoners were released to die’.10 Conquest quotes two
cases of people being released when they were on the point of death and correctly points out that this shows that the categories used in Gulag statistics may be
misleading.11 He seems to be unaware, however, that the release of prisoners on the
point of death was of cial policy and practised on a currently unknown scale over
many years."
https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf

Applebaum, Anne (2003) Gulag: A History. Doubleday. ISBN 0-7679-0056-1 pg 583: "both archives and memoirs indicate that it was common practice in many camps to release prisoners who were on the point of dying, thereby lowering camp death statistics."

[Anonymous No.18415805]

>>18415779
Ok, now I understand what you meant. It's late here so I'll try to keep this short
>Its hard to orient in the sense that every "intellectual" who prostituted themselves to soviet ideology had some stake in showing soviet brutality in a positive light as well as being by someone who had everything to gain by pushing his own anti-soviet ideals.
The very way in which you framed this already says something. In the same days when Belarus and China were "brutally repressing" their protests, EU and USA were doing the same, but somehow one side is dictatorship and one is democracy. I don't like one dude staying in power for 30 years in Europe, but I also don't think it's EU job to remove him from power.

[Anonymous No.18415817]

>>18415804
Yeah. It's terrible what happens in times of war, isn't it? Being invaded and having tens of millions of your population killed. USSR suffered literally more victims than everyone else combined (excluding China).

Btw (((Applebaum))) also mentions how USA prison population is higher TODAY than literally Stalin's gulags.

[Anonymous No.18415846]

>>18415792
>Because it literally is
Reducing nationalism to the very definition made by the French Illuminists, it has in no particular way any kind of relationship with antisemitism. You can be a nationalist without being an antisemite: the Lehi is the very proof of this. Russian nationalism has no particularity that sets it apart from merely being an application of the French concept.
>Assuming
What was the purpose of stating that he was an antisemite, then?
(If we consider antisemitic merely by the fact that he stated the jewish presence in the Bolshevik movement)

>>18415817
Was war the cause of the fact that the Soviet system disposed of their inmates when they were in the verge of death?
This has more to do with ethics than with the contigent conditions the country found itself.
> Being invaded and having tens of millions of your population killed. USSR suffered literally more victims than everyone else combined (excluding China).
Don't appeal to emotion. Remember that the Soviet system was responsible for many of the deaths the russian people suffered during wartime.
>Btw (((Applebaum))) also mentions how USA prison population is higher TODAY than literally Stalin's gulags.
And?

[Anonymous No.18415867]

>>18415846
Also, my bad, I didn't state that the procedure effectively started way before the war:
"In 1930 the OGPU issued order no. 361/164 of 23 October ‘On the unloading from
the OGPU camps of the elderly, complete invalids and the very ill’. This provided a
procedure for the release of this ‘un t for work ballast’.6 In January 1934 this order
was cancelled by OGPU order no. 501.7 In November 1934 NKVD order no. 00141
once again provided a procedure for the release of ‘the ill, the elderly and invalids’. Amongst other things it instructed the relevant bodies to draw up a list of illnesses
which would qualify the person concerned for release. In June 1939 a decree of the
Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet banned the practice of early release of
prisoners.8 On 29 April 1942 Beriya and the USSR Procurator Bochkov signed a joint
directive banning ‘until the end of the war’ all releases from the camps (e.g. of people
who had completed their sentences) with the exception of ‘complete invalids, the un t
for work, the elderly and women with children’, who could be released ‘in the case
of complete impossibility of using them in the camps’.9"

The Soviets were motivated not only by the fact that they needed to get rid of those unusable "items" as quickly as possible in order to keep the machine running without ever stopping, but also by the reduction of officially recognized deaths in the statistics.

[Anonymous No.18415878]

You don't, it's fairy tales set in the Gulag, it's not history nor does it need any context or framing the nature of fairy tales is that they're immediately appreciable

[Sage No.18415884]

Why do people like standing up for communism so much?

[Anonymous No.18415922]

>>18415884
because they are literally so stupid they actually think they just need one more revolution and their utopia will magically come into existence

[Anonymous No.18415933]

>>18415846
>Reducing nationalism to the very definition made by the French Illuminists
Anon, where do you think the idea of nationalism comes from, if I may ask?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18416036]

>>18415767
Since politically right/left is arbitrary, I answered what a slightly left-liberal looks like. Sanders epitomizes it. Genuine left-liberals aren’t allowed in office in the US. I’d say Corbyn is a genuinely left reformist. Old Labour.

[Anonymous No.18417040]

>>18415635
>Keep in mind that his book is not meant to be factually accurate, it's a political manifesto
How? he is literally adressing real events and people, specially when he criticizes the soviet institutions.

[Anonymous No.18417044]

>>18415502
Andrle. Fitzpatrick. Pirani. Nove / Miller debate.

[Anonymous No.18417046]

>>18417044
Millar rather.

[Anonymous No.18417052]

>>18415502
Varlam Shalamov Kolyma Tales

[KANYE VVEST No.18417075]

>>18415613
Trump W O N liberal,stop spreading lies,you neo-tranny

[Anonymous No.18417321]

>>18415502
https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/Russia/67RevRev.htm

[Anonymous No.18417364]

>>18415502
You just need to understand that writing that book was essentially a crime worthy of gulag in itself so obviously he was very limited in both sources and fact checking.
It's really only worth reading if you like his style of writing, it's a grand work of literature but if you want facts about the gulag there are better sources.

Start with one of his novels and see if you actually want 2000 pages more.

[Anonymous No.18417417]

>>18415502
Read Robert Conquest's acclaimed book The Great Terror.

[Anonymous No.18417484]

Start with Cancer Ward, A Day in The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and The First Circle. If you enjoy Solzhenitshyn's style, read The Gulag Archipelago, and August 14 afterwards. I really like Solzhenitshyn and consider him one of the best writers of the after-war period, and better than any American writer since Faulkner.

[Anonymous No.18417501]

>>18415613
The social agenda of the administration as as left wing as any government in modern history.

[Anonymous No.18417661]

>>18415502
If you are going to read blatant imperialist propaganda, try reading something actually intelligent rather than moralfag handwringing and lame conspiracy theories. Something like Bettelheim or at least Althusser.

[Anonymous No.18417707]

>>18415604
Its genuinely hilarious how commies think they are 'rebels' while never facing any consequences for their opinion or action, backed up by the alphabets, courts, academia, the press, cops. They are the most disgusting people in existence, acting as little bitches for liberals while pretending they are fighting power, unbelievably fucking repulsive

[Anonymous No.18417953]

>>18415755
Why? Not as an accusation or anything, but I see your butterfly ass posting all the time so I would like to know more of your philosophy. Why is national bad, and what do you consider to be a better alternative?

[Anonymous No.18417989]

>>18417953
newfag

Read some Proudhon and Stirner if you really want to understand her

[Anonymous No.18417995]

Jordan Peterson's introduction

[Anonymous No.18418015]

>>18417989
In all honesty I am a newfag when if comes to philosophy of this kind. Recommendations on where to start with said authors?