Gulag Archipelago

https://archive.org/details/TheGulagArchipelago-Threevolumes/The-Gulag-Archipelago__vol1__I-II__Solzhenitsyn/page/n3/mode/2up

Solzhenitzyn got a Nobel prize in literature, prior to this book.

Notes

• 507 - regular criminals to be sent off to Siberia worked with the guards to divide up loot of the political prisoners. The criminals were rewarded for plundering and killing, if it was against political prisoners. Not a sustainable reward structure.
• 463 -. But the hunger strike is a moral weapon. It presupposes that those it works on have a conscience. Or care about public opinion
• 438 - 1/2M political prisoners were shot in 1937-38 by Stalin. Other sources say 1.7 M
• Vlasov was tortured by the NKVD. Disasovew Russia and switched to the German side. When Russia won the war, Vlasov was terminated. Quite a scene at his trial, ended up with 30 guns pointed at the defendants at the end. Crowd sympathized with Vlasov.
• 426 -arrest for setting up public bakeries
• 412 - Arthur Koestler wrote Darkness at Noon.was a non-reductionist. Also, non-reductionism - Nobel was awarded - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Laughlin - wrote a book on emergence: Another Universe: Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down.
• 410 - those who condemned many others to be shot wilt at the notion of their own death . These two kinds of toughness are not connected.
• 370 - left SRs were eliminated, but shyly first before expediency became the guiding light for punishment
• 343 - in WW1 there was major famine in Russia and Russia also supplied Germany with food? Yes, part of the Brest Treaty, where Russia exited ww1 as it was getting its ass kicked and as a revolution was starting in Russia
• 298- a d what will happen when the waterfall of truth breaks through? It will happen.
• 273 defeat and misery spell a spiritual upsurge - defeat at Poltava made Sweden prosperous. Russian stoppage of Napoleon delayed freedom of the serfs by 50 years
• 243 Russian soldiers were the only ones not respected by its gov't? So they can't tell their fellows what they saw.
• 227 political red cross existed in So iet period to bring food gifts to prisoners
• 185 S had a spiritual sensor relay that enabled him to know immediately whom to trust and not! Never failed him once in 17 years. 'We neglect this miracle and don't help it develop'
• In keeping silent about evil, we implant it, and it will rise a 1000 fold.
• 177 it is unthinkable in the 20th century to fail to distinguish what constitutes a d abominable atrocity, and what constitutes the 'past' that should not be stirred up.
• For the sake of our country and children, we need to bring them to trial.
• That is the ultimate height that a trial can attain: that evil is so utterly condemned that even the criminal is revolted by it.
• 176 Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not? What kind of disastrous path does this pave?
• 86k nazi war criminals convicted by 1966. That would be 1/4M if trials took place in SU
• 175 evil also has a threshold, once crossed you don't return?
• 174 - ideology is the justification of the evildoer, gives him perseverance
• 168-70 . Powerful. How a genuinely 'good guy' turned evil
• 168 - if only there were evil people out there insidiously committing evil deeds, and if only we had to separate them from the good ones...but it's all not as soon mole as that, as evil and good runs through us all
• 144 - He was tortured by both, but the Gestapo was nonetheless trying to get at the

truth. and when the accusation did not hold up. Divnich was released. The MGB wasn't interested in the truth and had no intention of letting anyone out of its grip once he was arrested.