The Gulag Archipelago.
I finally finished reading the abridged version of The Gulag Archipelago and I have never been more depressed in my life. Every chapter is filled with horror, tragedy, and- surprisingly -a very small, almost non-existent, spark of hope. How the author (Alexander Solzhenitsyn) survived years of living in violent prison camps with inhuman conditions and half-mad, half-hopeful captives is beyond me! It made me ashamed of myself, because I know that if I were placed in a similar situation, I would rid myself of useless human morals in order to survive. How do survivors like Solzhenitsyn retain their faith in mankind, especially after being brutally tortured and mercilessly degraded by their own people? How could they bear hours of physical and mental torture without sacrficing their principles? Their honour? Did certain experiences in their lives strengthen their souls to such a degree that even after doing hard labour in a ghastly camp for eight/ten/twenty-five years, and being locked-up with insane, even murderous thugs, they are able to find the will to survive, to live; to look ahead into their future with nothing but faith and hope? Or are they one of those very special people, the kind who are born out of miracles, who possess that extra-amount of strength the rest of us have such a hard time finding?
Imagine surviving a German prison camp, only to be welcomed to your Motherland by Stalin's men who are only too eager to arrest you. And for what crime? For being a survivor? The Great Father, as Stalin liked to be called, unfortunately did not view things in a normal way: If one survived a German prison camp, it was taken as an act of betrayal to Russia. And so several Red Army soldiers preferred suicide, or a soldier's death (by throwing themselves under a tank), than go back home.
One of the most heartbreaking parts of the book was the Cossacks betrayal by the British Soldiers. These were men and their families who survived the Russian civil war, only to be plunged into another war: Now on the Germans' side, they fought Stalin and their fellow Russians. I know that this is seen as a true betrayal, perhaps in every sense of the word, but at the same time I cannot help but think, "I know it's wrong... but can you really blame them?" After all, Stalin himself had many of his own people killed, and for what good reason? Did he even have a reason? Well, not all the time, apparently.
My only complaint about the abridged version is that some chapters were reduced to just a few sentences. And so my curiousity on those topics were never satisfied. Overall, it is a great book. The story of the Gulag is as horrific and as tragic as the Holocaust, 'though much less talked about. Why this is so, I have no idea.