this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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About halfway through the Gulag Archipelago, anyone else give it a read? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 days ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to c/books@lemmy.world
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As a memoir, I find it very fascinating, though many of the individual stories are the result of games of telephone and hardly reliable; same as all oral histories. And, of course, the numbers suggested are deeply outdated by the fall of the SovUnion and the opening of the Soviet archives.

The 'rubber-band' effect of disillusionment with a worldview is on full display, certainly, considering Solzhenitsyn's youthful Soviet ideology. His resulting Tsarist apologia is not frequent, but pops up just often enough to be discomfiting.

Anyone else read this and have thoughts?

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

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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Very. About ~1800 pages or so in total. The author also wrote a novel inspired by his experiences which is MUCH shorter, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, if life in the gulags interests you, but not for 1800 pages worth. XD

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is that an actual book paper 1800 pages, or is it an ebook 1800 pages? Because of that number is the actual papers number, then that will be at least 5000 pages on an ebook. Which is not horrible per se, but it would be a very long read. Id say about a month or so

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I'm reading it online, but they appear to be just scanned print pages. It's ~1800 pages there. Split into three volumes.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

I see. I'm going to look into for real. Thank you for bringing that up