The History of the Gulag
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From Collectivization to the Great Terror
Oleg Khlevniuk; Translated by Vadim Staklo; Foreword by Robert Conquest; With editorial assistance and commentary by David J. Nordlander
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Format: PaperPrice: $45.00
"What a long, extraordinary process digging into the deepest secrets of the Gulag has been. Now, here is its history, fully, factually, and humanly effected for the present day by Oleg Khlevniuk."- Robert Conquest, from the forward
The human cost of the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system in which millions of people were imprisoned between 1920 and 1956, was staggering. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others after him have written movingly about the Gulag, yet never has there been a thorough historical study of this unique and tragic episode in Soviet history. This groundbreaking book presents the first comprehensive, historically accurate account of the camp system. Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk has mined the contents of extensive archives, including long-suppressed state and Communist Party documents, to uncover the secrets of the Gulag and how it became a central component of Soviet ideology and social policy.
Khlevniuk argues persuasively that the Stalinist penal camps created in the 1930s were essentially different from previous camps. He shows that political motivations and paranoia about potential enemies contributed no more to the expansion of the Gulag than the economic incentive of slave labor did. And he offers powerful evidence that the Great Terror was planned centrally and targeted against particular categories of the population. Khlevniuk makes a signal contribution to Soviet history with this exceptionally informed and balanced view of the Gulag.
Oleg V. Khlevniuk is senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow.
“What a long, extraordinary process digging into the deepest secrets of the Gulag has been. Now, here is its history, fully, factually, and humanly effected for the present day by Oleg Khlevniuk.”—Robert Conquest, from the foreword
“Khlevniuk brilliantly uses Soviet-era archives to create a scholarly portrait of the gulag.”—Library Journal
“Annals of Communism, Yale’s acclaimed series, adds another major documentary history to its list. More than 100 documents from the Russian archives are translated, and interspersed with Russian historian Khlevniuk’s extensive analysis. The result is a fascinatingly detailed depiction of that horrific symbol of the 20th century, the Soviet prison camp system.”—Publishers Weekly
“For anyone interested in examining the inherently corrupt nature of the Soviet regime . . . [this book] would be a good place to start. . . . A comprehensive picture of the gulag.”—Gordon Haber, The New York Sun
"[A] meticulous study. . . . A solid reference work covering an enormous range of underexplored issues raised by the Gulag, including its impact on Soviet society. It makes an important contribution in our search to understand this integral mechanism of the Soviet system."—Nanci Adler, The Russian Review
Publication Date: September 3, 2013
38 b/w illus.
