Gulag

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Praise

Introduction

PART ONE - THE ORIGINS OF THE GULAG, 1917—1939

Chapter 1 - BOLSHEVIK BEGINNINGS

Chapter 2 - “THE FIRST CAMP OF THE GULAG”

Chapter 3 - 1929: THE GREAT TURNING POINT

Chapter 4 - THE WHITE SEA CANAL

Chapter 5 - THE CAMPS EXPAND

Chapter 6 - THE GREAT TERROR AND ITS AFTERMATH

PART TWO - LIFE AND WORK IN THE CAMPS

Chapter 7 - ARREST

Chapter 8 - PRISON

Chapter 9 - TRANSPORT, ARRIVAL, SELECTION

Chapter 10 - LIFE IN THE CAMPS

ZONA: WITHIN THE BARBED WIRE

REZHIM: RULES FOR LIVING

BARAKI: LIVING SPACE

BANYA: THE BATHHOUSE

STOLOVAYA: THE DINING HALL

Chapter11 - WORK IN THE CAMPS

RABOCHAYA ZONA: THE WORK ZONE

KVCh: THE CULTURAL-EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT

Chapter 12 - PUNISHMENT AND REWARD

SHIZO: PUNISHMENT CELLS

POCHTOVYI YASHCHIK: POST OFFICE BOX

DOM SVIDANII: THE HOUSE OF MEETINGS

Chapter 13 - THE GUARDS

Chapter 14 - THE PRISONERS

URKI: THE CRIMINALS

KONTRIKI AND BYTOVYE: THE POLITICALS AND THE ORDINARY PRISONERS

Chapter 15 - WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Chapter 16 - THE DYING

Chapter 17 - STRATEGIES OF SURVIVAL

TUFTA: PRETENDING TO WORK

PRIDURKI: COOPERATION AND COLLABORATION

SANCHAST: HOSPITALS AND DOCTORS

“ORDINARY VIRTUES”

Chapter 18 - REBELLION AND ESCAPE

PART THREE - THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CAMP–INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, 1940—1986

Chapter 19 - THE WAR BEGINS

Chapter 20 - “STRANGERS”

Chapter 21 - AMNESTY—AND AFTERWARD

Chapter 22 - THE ZENITH OF THE CAMP–INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Chapter 23 - THE DEATH OF STALIN

Chapter 24 - THE ZEKS’ REVOLUTION

Chapter 25 - THAW—AND RELEASE

Chapter 26 - THE ERA OF THE DISSIDENTS

Chapter 27 - THE 1980s: SMASHING STATUES

Appendix - HOW MANY?

NOTES

Epilogue - MEMORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION PERMISSIONS

GLOSSARY

About the Author

Also by Anne Applebaum

Copyright Page

This Book Is Dedicated to

Those Who Described What Happened

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months

waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the

crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue

from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before.

Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a

whisper (everyone whispered there):

“Can you describe this?”

And I said: “I can.”

Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been

her face . . .

—Anna Akhmatova, “Instead of a Preface: Requiem 1935–1940”

Acclaim for Anne Applebaum’s

GULAG

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize

“Should become the standard history of one of the greatest evils of the twentieth century.” —The Economist

“Thorough, engrossing. . . . A searing attack on the corruption and the viciousness that seemed to rule the system and a testimonial to the resilience of the Russian people. . . . Her research is impeccable.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“An affecting book that enables us at last to see the Gulag whole. . . . A valuable and necessary book.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Ambitious and well-documented. . . . Invaluable. . . . Applebaum methodically, and unflinchingly, provides a sense of what it was like to enter and inhabit the netherworld of the Gulag.” —The New Yorker

“[Applebaum’s] writing is powerful and incisive, but it achieves this effect through simplicity and restraint rather than stylistic flourish. . . . [An] admirable and courageous book.” —The Washington Monthly

“Monumental. . . . Applebaum uses her own formidable reporting skills to construct a gripping narrative.” —Newsday

“Valuable. There is nothing like it in Russian or in any other language. It deserves to be widely read.” —Financial Times

“A book whose importance is impossible to exaggerate. . . . Magisterial. . . . Applebaum’s book, written with such quiet elegance and moral seriousness, is a major contribution to curing the amnesia that curiously seems to have affected broader public perceptions of one of the two or three major enormities of the twentieth century.” —The Times Literary Supplement