Gulag Archipelago

It's really good. It never really bogged down for me. I read them over the course of a couple years though, with other stuff in between. Reading all three straight through would be tough. It's pretty emotionally draining.

It's a heavy book (in 3 volumes, no less), but not a slog.

He weaves a personal story (mostly his own, but also those details he gleaned from fellow prisoners and other reports) into a history of the entire system. It is one of the finest books of its type.

quote:

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Reading all three straight through would be tough.

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It was. probably not a good idea on my part. It did get to be a bit of a slog, but not really until I was at least half way through.

It's amazing to me that the world really had no idea that this was going on until the book made it out of the Soviet Union.

It was interesting that Solzhenitsyn was a strong Russian nationalist (even after all he suffered) who hated Ukrainians.

After reading the books it's easy to see why German POWs never made it back to Germany. They were treated worse than anyone and had essentially a zero percent chance of survival.

I read the first one thirty years and actually found the story of the writing of the book just as interesting as the main content. The compilation of the stories under the boot of the Soviet police state was basically 1960's crowdsourcing. And under great duress.

LINK
Good modern companion book to TGA

Might also enjoy: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Short story about life in a gulag. Same author, A.S. (whose name I won’t try to spell)

I think that's the way to go. You're going to need time to decompress and process in between the books. Similar to books like Red Famine, it causes a bit of introspection where you just need to think for a few days/weeks, reading something lighter until you're ready.