Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Gulag Archipelago Two (1918-1956): An Experiment in Literary Investigation III-IV, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 1975

Double Genocide Valid: Individual Gulag Camps With 100% Mortality, Just Like Nazi Death Camps

There is so much here about Russian history, Soviet thinking and policies, and the situation inside the Gulags. Because there are so many topics and issues raised in this combined volume, I will elaborate on only a few of them. They are relevant to Black Ribbon Day.

Solzhenitsyn rarely mentions Gulag Poles in this set of volumes. In one year, 2,100 Zolotisty camp Polish inmates had been reduced to 168 survivors (p. 131).

GULAG CONDITIONS WERE DELIBERATELY EXTERMINATORY

Communist apologists have claimed that Gulag deaths were caused largely by passive negligence, Soviet-system inefficiencies, wartime disruptions and privations, etc. This is nonsense. To illustrate: “…police dogs are fed better than prisoners…” (p. 534).

INDUSTRIAL GENOCIDE NON-SIGNIFICANCE. VICTIMS GET TO DIE SLOWLY INSTEAD OF QUICKLY, AND MORE CHEAPLY

Well, at least there were no gas chambers in the Gulags. But so what? They weren’t needed! Referring to the primitive state of Gulag life, labor, and death, Solzhenitsyn quipped: “That’s what our gas execution van consisted of. We didn’t have any gas for the gas chamber.” (p. 91). In describing the Belomor Canal project, Solzhenitsyn commented: “Stalin simply needed a great construction project SOMEWHERE which would devour many working hands and many lives (the surplus of people as a result of the liquidation of the kulaks), with the reliability of the gas execution van but more cheaply, and which would at the same time leave a great monument to his reign of the same general sort as the pyramids.” (p. 86. Emphasis his).

THE HOLOCAUST OBFUSCATION NONSENSE: MANY GULAGS HAD 100% MORTALITY

Some have argued that there was no Gulag equivalent to the Nazi death camps-no camps to which admission absolutely guaranteed death. In fact, there were. Solzhenitsyn comments, “Certain work brigades (Ogurtsov) died off totally, including the brigadiers.” (p. 221). Also: “The real Solovki was in the logging operations, at the remote work sites. But it is precisely those distant backwoods that are most difficult to learn about nowadays, because THOSE people did not survive.” (p. 54. Emphasis his). He adds that, “During the war years (on war rations), the camp inmates called three weeks at logging `DRY EXECUTION.'” (p. 199. Emphasis his). Finally, he emphasizes that, “We are not able to enumerate the countless logging camps. They constituted half the Archipelago.” (p. 593).

THE SOVIET COMMUNISTS KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN DID THE GERMAN NAZIS

Solzhenitsyn cites 15 million Gulag inmates, at any one time, based on the ROSSIYA-SSSR encyclopedia-a figure also endorsed by former inmates (p. 205). According to émigré Professor of Statistics Kurganov, the Gulag claimed 66,000,000 lives from 1917 to 1959 (p. 10).

YES, THE COMMUNISTS ALSO MURDERED CHILDREN

The Soviet concentration camps have sometimes been favorably compared to the Nazi German ones by western liberals and Judeocentrists. We hear, for instance, that at least the children were well treated. Tell that to the Gulag children, some imprisoned for political crimes at the dangerous age of six! (p. 463). Besides physical suffering, Gulag children underwent severe de-moralization, in effect becoming amoral beasts (e. g., p. 452). Finally: “They didn’t hesitate to liquidate the `kulak’ families right down to tiny children, and they even wrote about it proudly in the newspapers.” (pp. 370-371).