6 Comments

Great read Curtis. What a great look into the world of the Soviet Union with a writer like Solzhenitsyn. I shared some of this with my mom and she thoroughly enjoyed your take and complimented your writing!

Expand full comment

Thank you!

Expand full comment

"Reading it through without shying is no cakewalk, but it’s all the better for know what happened, knowing ourselves, and knowing how fast pied pipers peddling paradise, protection, racial solidarity, or anything else can take us to hell."

Yes. I'll admit I haven't tackled The Gulag Archipelago, but I've read his books Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I'm currently reading Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women's Voices from the Gulag by Monika Zgustova and it was hard to put down last night. The author chronicles the lives of 9 women who survived the brutal Soviet prisons and labor camps. Not easy reading, but important to not forget about these historical crimes against humanity.

Expand full comment

Agreed! Thanks for sharing those additional titles.

Expand full comment

Who was responsible for the English translation? They deserve a lot of credit for the alliteration.

Someday, maybe, I’ll read both books mentioned. There is a degree of only so much depravity that I want to delve into at a time.

The last dark book I read was “Night” by Elie Wiesel. It was a first person account of the Holocaust.

The book before that was “The Thirty Year Genocide”.

Expand full comment

Translated by Thomas P. Whitney (parts I- v) and Harry Willets (parts v - vii)

Abridged by Edward E. Ericson, jr.

Expand full comment