GULAG

Anne Applebaum’s book is not only a comprehensive history of the Soviet camp system, based on archival documents and eyewitness accounts, tracing its development from its creation in 1918 until the mid-1980s. With no less care than she takes in reconstructing the chronology and geography of the Gulag, the author attempts to understand the logic of both tormentors and victims—what drove people to kill and what helped them survive. Applebaum gives voice to Russians and Americans, Poles and Jews, communists and anti-communists who passed through the camps, their testimonies forming a picture of extraordinary coherence and power. This is a meticulous description of the world of the camps, with its laws and unwritten rules, its distinctive language and hierarchy. Anne Applebaum’s “Gulag” has won the Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into dozens of languages.