The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
-- Karl Marx
(1818-1883) German philosopher, father of Communism, co-author of the 'Communist Manifesto'
Source: The Communist Manifesto, 1848.






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



A person who is not inwardly prepared for the use of violence against him is always weaker than the person committing the violence.



It would have been impossible to carry out this hygienic purging ... if they had to follow outdated legal processes and normal judicial procedures, so an entirely new form was adopted: extrajudicial reprisal, combining in one set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, trial, and execution of the verdict.


A convenient world outlook gives rise to a convenient juridical term: social prophylaxis.




"We draw no distinction between intention and the crime itself, and this is an instance of the superiority of Soviet legislation to bourgeois legislation."




"An inquiry is distinguished from an investigation by the fact that it is carried out to determine whether there is a basis for proceeding to an investigation."



Given the fact that the cases were always fabricated, violence and torture had to accompany them.



I smiled in pride that I had been arrested not for stealing, nor treason, nor desertion, but because I had discovered through my power of reasoning the evil secrets of .......




Those [returning] prisoners who had been in Buchenwald and survived were, in fact imprisoned for that very reason in our own camps: "How could you have survived an annihilation camp? Something doesn't smell right."

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

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

______ seems somehow to have twisted around and maximized the famous declaration of that coquette Catherine the Great: he would rather that 999 innocent men should rot than miss one genuine spy.


Having lost the appetite for war, the Swedes became the most prosperous and the freest people in Europe.

It has, after all, been explained to us that the heart of the matter is not personal guilt, but social danger.


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


One other crime that called for execution by shooting; unauthorized return from abroad.


Lenin foresaw a time not far distant when there would be a constant rush of people to the Soviet Union from Europe, and it would be impossible to get anyone voluntarily to leave the Soviet Union for the West.


Even in freedom our people are taught to take orders from anyone in a uniform.

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