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The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

Book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 4 quotes · 1974, Gulag, Soviet Russia

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The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV Quotes

“Marx, concerning himself with a less remote time ("Critique of the Gotha Program"), declared with equal conviction that the one and only means of correcting offenders (true, he referred to criminals; he never even conceived that his pupils might consider politicals offenders) was not solitary contemplation, not moral soul-searching, not repentance, and not languishing (for all that was superstructures!)—but productive labor. He himself had never taken a pick in hand. To the end of his days he never pushed a wheelbarrow, mined coal, felled timber, and we don't even know how his firewood was split—but he wrote that down on paper, and the paper did not resist.”

HypocrisyMarxismPolitical PrisonersKarl MarxGulag1974Prison LaborFor Profit PrisonsWhat The Archipelago Stands On
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“The reason why camps proved economically profitable had been foreseen as far back as Thomas More, the great-grandfather of socialism, in his Utopia. The labor of the zeks was needed for degrading and particularly heavy work, which no one, under socialism, would wish to perform. For work in remote and primitive localities where it would not be possible to construct housing, schools, hospitals, and stores for many years to come. For work with pick and spade—in the flowering of the twentieth century. For the erection of the great construction projects of socialism, when the economic means for them did not yet exist.”

Utopia1974Hard LaborPrison LaborFor Profit PrisonsWe Are Building
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“Like a piece of rotten meat which not only stinks right on its own surface but also surrounds itself with a stinking molecular cloud of stink, so, too, each island of the archipelago created and supported a zone of stink around itself. This zone, more extensive than the Archipelago itself, was the intermediate transmission zone between the small zone of each individual island and the Big Zone—the Big Camp Compound—comprising the entire country.”

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Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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