The fact that people could be so evil, its such a foreign concept to me I guess, like I knew there were serial killers and sadistic torturers out there, but just learning about the history of the soviet union, how they put so much effort into making things look fine, when they’re actually not. Its one thing to affect an individual’s life with an act, but to infuse that view on the entire world, doesn’t that narcissism and self-deception, even with good intentions, not shake your soul to the very core?
You read the Gulag Archipelago because of Jordan Peterson?
Yes it’s horrific ofc….but imo every country has a dark chapter in its history: Germany had the Nazis, Soviet Union had the Gulags, India had large scale communal riots & violence, Rwanda had their infamous genocide & South Africa had Apartheid
Ofc that doesn’t excuse any of their actions, but I think it’s kinda necessary to read books like that to yk…know how low some humans would stoop
OP got Dostoyevsky’d a bit.
I started buying baguettes of bread for lunch during my read of that magnificent work
You know the church has committed many hundreds of times the atrocities the soviets ever did, right?
It’s kinda funny in a way getting shocked by atrocities on a smaller scale into the hands of a perpetrator of much bigger atrocities. Well it could be funny if it weren’t for it being such a sad thing.
Keep in mind that the author exaggerates a lot. Especially when he cites any kind of numbers, those are entirely anecdotal.
I do acknowledge that, but its kind of hard to put a proper estimate too it when Soviet Union record keeping was either also exaggerated or taken out of existence, what do you I should do as a good middle ground?
The fact that people could be so evil, its such a foreign concept to me I guess,
What is remarkable is the actual availability of a book, or many books, on Lenin and Stalin. And Mao.
The dilemma is, that these are typically framed as the problem was “communism”.
Pretty clearly, the problem was , among other antecedents, Napoleon [ whose hat still sells for millions of Euros], Bismark [ who is probably still getting towns and boats named after him ], and Marx and Engels.
The best place to start, as always, for an existential problem, is with the Old Testament. Specifically Genesis and Exodus.
One can always argue that they are myth, not history - the same can also be said for *The Peloponesian War, The Iliad,
The Trojan Women
Andromache.*
However, there is a kernel of history there, at least in that Tacitus and Josephus re framed real history with a great deal of seeming reliability.
But start with Flavius Josephus and Tacitus. Then go to the history of the Hapsburgs. Then the Romanovs.
Maybe I am a psycho but I had a lot of good laughs out of it. Especially where they build the canal that had to be rebuilt as soon as it was done. Russia is wild. Book does have a sad tone to it alot, but the sheer incompetence of socialists is often hilarious.
What country are you a citizen of?
The Gulag: a history by Anne Applebaum is well worth a read, if possible