From the thirties to sixties in the Soviet Union, the leadership of the camps of mass detention in custody was entrusted to the Main Directorate of Camps (GULAG). A. Solzhenitsyn “The Gulag Archipelago” (a summary of the work is set out below) was written in 1956, in a magazine version it was published in 1967. As for the genre, the author himself called it an artistic study.
The Gulag Archipelago. Summary of Part 1 on the prison industry, Part 2 on perpetual motion
The narrator lists the paths to getting into the Gulag of everyone who was there: from managers and guards to prisoners. The types of arrests are analyzed. It is stated that they had no reason, but were caused by the need to achieve a control indicator in terms of quantity. The fugitives were not caught or attracted, only those who were convinced of the justice of the authorities and their innocence received the term.
The narrator explores the history of mass arrests in the country immediately after the October Revolution. The meaning of the powerful and sinister article 58 added to the 1926 Penal Code is clarified. It was designed so that it could become a punishment for any act.
It describes the course of a typical investigation, based on the Soviet citizens' ignorance of their rights, and the ways the investigators will fulfill the plan to turn those under investigation into prisoners. Then investigators and even ministers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs became prisoners, and with them all their subordinates, friends, relatives and just acquaintances.
The narrator describes the geography of the archipelago. From the transit prisons (he calls them "ports"), zaki wagons (ordinary wagons, but with grates for transporting in each compartment up to 25 prisoners), called "ships", are set sail. The prisoners were transported by real ships and barges with deep and dark holds, where neither the doctor nor the convoy had ever descended.
The Gulag Archipelago. Summary of part 3 on extermination labor camps, part 4 on the soul and barbed wire
The narrator sets out the story of the creation of camps in Soviet Russia in which people were forced to work. The idea of their creation was put forward by Lenin in the winter of 1918, after the revolt of the Socialist Revolutionaries was suppressed. The leader’s idea was enshrined in an instruction which clearly stated that all able-bodied prisoners must be involved in work without fail. In the Red Terror Decree, such labor camps were called "concentration camps."
Since, according to the Soviet leaders, they lacked rigor, the leadership took care of the creation of the Northern Camps, which had a special purpose and inhumane order. After all the monks were expelled from the Solovetsky Monastery , he received prisoners. They were put in bags and thrown into punishment cells for violations, where they were kept in harsh conditions.
Free labor of prisoners was used to lay the soil Kem-Ukhta tract through impenetrable swamps and forests, in the summer people drowned, in the winter they froze. Roads were also built beyond the Arctic Circle and on the Kola Peninsula, and often prisoners were not provided with even the most primitive tools and built by hand.
The prisoners escaped, one group was even able to get to Britain. So in Europe they learned about the existence of the Gulag. Books about the camps began to appear, but the Soviet people did not believe. Even Gorky, who was told the truth by a minor prisoner, left Solovki without believing, and the boy was shot.
There have been great construction sites in the history of the Archipelago, for example, the Belomorkanal, which took countless lives. The trainers of prisoners arrived at the construction site in echelons, where there was still no plan, no exact calculations, no equipment, no tools, no normal supply, or barracks.
Since 1937, the regime in the Gulag has tightened. They began to guard them with dogs under a bright electric light. Worse than the guards were criminals who were allowed to rob and oppress the "political" with impunity.
The defense for a woman in the camps was a deep old age or noticeable ugliness, while beauty was a disaster. Women worked in the same jobs as men, even at logging. If any of them became pregnant, then at the time of feeding the baby she was transported to another camp. After feeding was completed, the child was sent to the orphanage, and the mother - according to the stage.
There were children in the Gulag. Since 1926, they allowed to judge children who committed murder or theft from the age of twelve. Since 1935, they were allowed to use executions and all other penalties. There have been cases when eleven-year-old children of “enemies of the people” were sent to the Gulag for 25 years.
As for the economic benefits of prison labor, it turned out to be very doubtful, because the quality of bonded labor left much to be desired, and the camps did not pay off.
There were few suicides in the Gulag, and there were more suicides. But the fugitives were being sold back to the camp by a hostile local population. Those who could not escape took an oath to survive, no matter what.
The advantage of the Archipelago was non-obstruction of human thoughts: there was no need to join the party, the trade union, there were no production or party meetings, no agitation. The head was free, which contributed to the rethinking of former life and spiritual growth. But, of course, this did not apply to everyone. Most goals were occupied with thoughts of daily bread, the need for labor was perceived as hostile, and cellmates were considered rivals. People not enriched by spiritual life, the Archipelago embittered and molested even more.
The existence of the Gulag was detrimental to the rest of the non-camp part of the country, forcing people to fear for themselves and their loved ones. Fear made betrayal the safest way to survive. Cruelty was brought up and the border between good and evil was blurred.
The Gulag Archipelago. Summary of part 5 of the penal servitude, part 6 of the link
In the forty-third year, Stalin again introduced the gallows and hard labor. Not all deified him in the thirties; there was a peasant minority who was more sober than the townspeople and did not share the enthusiastic attitude of the party and the Komsomol towards the leader and the world revolution.
Link in Russia was legalized in the 17th century. By the thirties of the 20th century, it had become a temporary shelter for those who would go under the ruthless knife of the Soviet dictatorship.
Unlike other exiled, prosperous peasants, families were sent to uninhabited remote places without food and agricultural equipment. Most were starving. In the forties, whole nations began to be expelled.
The Gulag Archipelago. A summary of part 7 of what happened after the death of the leader
After 1953, the Archipelago did not disappear, it was time for unprecedented concessions. The narrator believes that the Soviet regime cannot stand without him. The life of prisoners will never get better, because they receive punishment, but in reality the system takes out their miscalculations on them, that people are not the way their Advanced Leninist-Stalinist doctrine conceived. The state is still lined with a metal rim of law. There is a rim - there is no law.
Summary “The Gulag Archipelago”, Solzhenitsyn’s autobiographical work , does not allow the reader to put on the guise of a prisoner, to penetrate the warped consciousness of a native of the Archipelago, which, according to the author, was aimed at a detailed description of the camp and prison realities in the full text of the work.