Gulag Voices Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum wields her considerable knowledge of this dark chapter in history and presents a collection of the writings of survivors of the Gulag, the Soviet concentration camps. Although the opening of the Soviet archives to scholars has made it possible to write the history of this notorious concentration camp system, documents tell only one side of the story. Gulag: An Anthology now fills in the other half.

The backgrounds of the writers reflect the extraordinary diversity of the Gulag itself. Here are the personal stories of figures such as renowned literary scholar Dmitri Likhachev; Anatoly Marchenko, the son of illiterate labourers; and, American citizen Alexander Dolgun. These remembrances - many of them appearing in English for the first time, each chosen for both literary and historical value - collectively spotlight the strange moral universe of the camps, as well as the relationships that prisoners had with one another, with their guards, and with professional criminals who lived beside them. A vital addition to the literature of this era, annotated for a generation that no longer remembers the Soviet Union, "Gulag: An Anthology" will inform, interest, and inspire, offering a source for reflection on human nature itself.

Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction as well as numerous other awards. A columnist for the Washington Post and Slate, she is a regular contributor to many publications, including the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. She lives in Warsaw, Poland.

"Gulag Voices will inform a generation fortunate enough to be living in different times."-Mary Dejevsky, The Independent

"Applebaum has performed an invaluable service"-Victor Sebestyen, The Spectator

"Applebaum... is the ideal editor, providing introductions to each account, as well as a general explanation of the Gulag system. Her selection, each depicting a different aspect of Gulag life, leaves an unforgettable impression."-Anthony Beevor, The Mail on Sunday

"The power of Gulag Voices is not only to remind us of the horrors of the Soviet Union's corrective labour institutions and to honour those who were incarcerated there. It is also to illuminate the human consequences"-Wendy Slater, Times Literary Supplement

"A journey into an incredibly rich and sharp recollection of feelings and emotions… The memoirs of these authors take the reader far beyond the duty of memory towards the dead, into the depths of the human heart where, as Solzhenitsyn disclosed when he wrote The Gulag Archipelago, ‘the line separating good and evil passes." F.G. The Global Journal