Analysis Of Gulag Voices By Anne Applebaum

"If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like I would have eaten more. I wouldn't have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath..." (Gruener, 2). These are the words of Yanek Gruener looking back at what he had dealt with the past six years. The book, “Prisoner B-3087”, by Alan Gratz is based on a true story of a boy, Jack Gruener, who survived 10 concentration camps in six years. Yanek Gruener had went through way more than he would have ever imagined, beatings, starvation, death marches, and scarce food supply. However, he survived. Yanek could have never survived if it wasn't for his resourceful way of thinking, his courageous mindset, and the help from everyone else, including himself, through

Young women in particular face serious forms of abuse during this time. The author describes on multiple occasions when she was assaulted by Russian soldiers. While she describes how horrible this makes her feels, she knows that having the Russian officers around her does protect her in certain ways. She is the companion of Russian soldier by the name of Anatol. He and other soldiers

Night and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich express the potential horrors of humanity’s immense capacity for extreme cruelty. Both took place in mid-twentieth century Europe and exposed the hardships of life in forced-labor camps: Wiesel’s in various concentration camps, Solzhenitsyn’s in Gulags. It is important for human populations to be aware of these tragedies so as to not commit the same atrocities again; therefore, this essay will explore each with regards to shared or different themes included and the messages presented. Both of these books are important due to their influential and informative nature regarding the horrors of their respective historical times. Night by Elie Wiesel and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr

Sofia Petrovna follows the life of Sofia Petrovna, a typist who works at the Leningrad publishing house. After the death of her husband and capture of her son, Sofia goes insane. It’s a type of unhinged that demonstrates itself in mirages minutely dissimilar from the deceits those surrounding her voice to guard themselves. Sofia Petrovna proposes an extraordinary and fundamental account of Stalin's Great Purges through simple fictional story arcs. First, there is the vanishing of seemingly innocent people. Sofia looses several people in her life throughout the duration of the novel with almost no warning or explanation. This provides an effective look into

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn shows how Soviet prisoners, known as Zeks, are treated while being in the gulag for one day through the eyes of the protagonist and omniscient narrator named Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Despite being in an environment such as the Soviet Union, where there is harsh tundra and not much food to eat, Shukhov tries to make good use of what he has received while trying to keep himself alive. The purpose of Solzhenitsyn’s portrayal of food is to show its overall significance and that it is used as a means of trade and survival. Over time, the power of food reveals its significance to the Zeks and especially to Shukhov and food allows both groups understanding towards the necessity of food for their vitality and well-being additionally.

Throughout time, torture has been used as a cruel war tactic to exploit human beings and dehumanize the characteristics that give people their identities outside of prison walls. In Rena 's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz, Rena Kornreich tells her own accounts of the torture she experienced by both men and women during World War II. Similarly, Coco Fusco sheds light on the use of torture by women in the United States Abu Ghraib military scandal in A Field Guide for Female Interrogators. While in very different time frames, a female victim and a female liberator seamlessly tie together the antics that have been experienced and performed in war by thousands of men and

One of the most brutal mistakes made by Stalin was the creation of a GULAG. It is difficult to give a precise characterization of its purpose. The aim of this work is to answer the question, “Can we generalize why certain people were able to survive the Gulag more than others?” To survive the Gulag, many prisoners had to fight with others for food, shelter, and simple medical care. Certain prisoners went into religious and intellectual meditations to preserve at least the appearance of intelligence. The survival required willpower, strength of mind, skills, mercilessness, and a lot of luck.

To begin with, this book educated the reader about the past. Everyone in the Soviet Union looked up to the leader, Stalin, even though he wasn’t a good leader at all. He caused many problems for the citizens including uncomfortable living conditions. This book educates the reader by showing that back then even when people were treated badly, they still had to look up to their leader even though he was the cause of all

Every former Gulag prisoner explained his/her survival as a result of many insignificant strategies. A variety of memoirists claimed that the only reason why they have survived was due to their spiritual life. To distract themselves for the physical sufferings, many prisoners created mental

Soviet officials prioritised the establishment of Communist Hegemony in the GDR (Bruce 2003, p. 6) and therefore allocated vast resources to controlling threats (Bruce 2003, p. 14). The end of World War II saw eleven internment camps established, intended for Nazis and those against communism (Bruce 2003, p. 6), and from 1945 to 1954, Erica Riemann found herself interned in a number of them (Molloy 2009, p. 65). We may be aware of GDR paranoia resulting in prosecution of imagined crimes (Bessel 2011, p. 154), but it is through individual stories that the reality of this comes across. The fact that a schoolgirl was interrogated, assaulted and sleep deprived for hours in a dungeon for taking lipstick to a picture of Stalin (Molloy 2009, p. 66) reveals the absurdity and extent of the cruelty that the SED went to. The details of long nightly interrogations and starvation help us understand how a normal teenager ended up confessing to being part of Nazi resistance (Molloy 2009, p. 66). It is through examples of people being mocked, raped, starved, assaulted, threatened and killed that we can begin to imagine the experiences of prisoners. Recounts of Erica’s attempted suicide and the inability to hold relationships (Molloy 2009, p. 73) create a deeper understanding of the

They NKVD treated the people like animals while the NKVD officers were living in luxury. They slept on beds in brick houses with plenty of food, drinks, and even cigarettes. The NKVD were living great when many people were dying of starvation, vitamin deficiency, and diseases. The lesson I got from this book was to treat others the way you want to be treated. The NKVD officers didn't think twice about the torture they were putting the people through. The learning is important because I think treating others the way they want to be treated is a problem our society greatly struggles with. People are judged every day by their religion and race. For example, a group of terrorist named the Neo-Nazism believe in one race and one religion . The group participates in protests and various hate crimes. They believe that the nazis should have won WWii and that the opposing races should be

The work stirred many other Soviet writers to produce works describing their own situations of political imprisonment. Solzhenitsyn soon fell from the state’s grace, however, and was exiled when he attempted to published the first volume of a definitive literary-historical work on the Soviet incarceration system: The Gulag Archipelago. He moved to the USA, where he finished the other two volumes of his masterwork, and returned to Russia in 1996.

Were it a testimony to the rigors and cruelness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, besides perhaps Anne Franke`s diary and the testimony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done. The prisoners of the labor camp, as in Shukhov?s predicament, were required to behave as Soviets or face severe punishment. In an almost satirical tone Buinovsky exclaims to the squadron that ?You?re not behaving like Soviet People,? and went on saying, ?You?re not behaving like communist.? (28) This type of internal monologue clearly persuades a tone of aggravation and sarcasm directly associated to the oppression?s of communism.

The Gulags of the Soviet Union have been compared to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, but in reality they were worse. The Gulags were isolated prison camps peppered across Siberia. Death, torture, and disease raged within their walls, while endless work went on outside. Gulag personnel were cruel and unfeeling, using terrible punishment methods and playing senseless games that cost prisoners their lives. Political enemies of the Bolshevik party made up a significant portion of the prisoner population, with most sent to the infamous camp system Kolyma. Liberation was painfully slow, but by 1960, all of the Gulags were gone.

When Nikita Khrushchev seized control over the Soviet Union he kicked off what is known as the “Thaw” began. This period in time when citizens were forced into labor camps where millions of people were sent for crimes against the country that included practicing certain religions, having communications with foreign persons, and talking out contrary to the government. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a controversial short novel published in 1962 that was fiction, but based in reality about the “gulag” (Solzhenitsyn PG#) prison system that Joseph Stalin, the dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1952. During Stalin's rule of fear, millions were arrested and shipped off to gulags. One Day in the Life of Ivan