the gulag archipelago the authorized abridgement

If we have strength enough, we look around us and listen to the stories of peasants and priests, intellectuals and factory workers, former Party functionaries and military men, informers and trusties, common criminals and juveniles, representatives of every religion and every nationality in the USSR. Or else we spend days on end in an overcrowded boxcar converted for transporting prisoners, tormented by thirst we are robbed by professional criminals on transfer points we freeze in the camps of Siberia or Kolyma performing “general duties” in our emaciated state. The force of his art is such that we are soon transformed from observers into participants of the journey: we shudder at the hiss of “You’re under arrest!”, we agonize throughout our first sleepless night in a prison cell, we are marched with rapidly beating hearts to our first interrogation, we flounder helplessly in the meat-grinder that is the investigation process, we steal a peek at the neighboring death-row cells, and, after the farce of a “trial” or even without it, we are cast out onto the islands of the Archipelago. We follow the author as he steps into a vessel that will take us from island to island, at times squeezing through narrow passages, at times sailing rapidly down straight canals, at times battling the waves of the open sea. What are the contours of this risen Archipelago?

“The Archipelago Rises from the Sea” is the title of a chapter about the legendary Solovki camp of the early Soviet period. So what kind of book is The Gulag Archipelago? What was the result of melting down those heavy cast-iron fragments?

The gulag archipelago the authorized abridgement