Resistance in the Gulag Archipelago

by Donald G. Boudreau

An estimated 70 million people may have died in Soviet gulags. Such raises many Where is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of the Stalinist reign of terror? Where are the six hundred prisoners armed with stolen guns and grenades attacking the Nazi guards, literally blowing up the death houses at Treblinka, and fleeing into the nearby Polish forests? Where are the suicide missions? How could the Russian people have gone to their incarceration, torture, and slaughter like lambs? Was fear of government retaliation so pervasive in the Soviet mind that it negated any and all forms of resisting, dissenting, and protesting? Why did the Jews, despite their relative few in number and the lateness of the hour, arm themselves in rebellion, while the Soviets of this period appear as pacifists in the face of a system which exemplified dialectical terrorism?The writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, introduced the term Gulag to the Western world with the 1973 publication of his The Gulag Archipelago. The book likened the scattered prison camps to a “chain of islands” and depicted the Gulag as a system where people were essentially worked to death. In March 1940, for example, there were 53 separate camps and 423 labor colonies in the USSR. This essay attempts to glean the manifestations which occurred within the Gulag that can be characterized as inmates resisting, dissenting, and otherwise engaging in protesting-like activities. This objective is carried out by examining resistance in the Gulag archipelago through addressing the relevant portions of historical written works, including among other sources, Soviet historian Roy A. Medvedev’s Let History The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (1972), Robert Goldston’s The Russian Revolution (1966) , two of Solzhenitsyn’s finest novels, Cancer Ward (1972) and The First Circle (1972), and of course, through our primary source, Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation. Parts I-II (1973). While written in 1974 as the author’s senior thesis as a Political Science major college undergraduate, some might question the dated nature of this essay given the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and other subsequent reforms that have since taken place in Russia. But such would be short term focused and misguided, in the sense that the subject remains useful given that contemporary Russia, the former Soviet Union has, in many ways, failed to come to grips with the Stalinist era in Soviet history and its resultant tragic legacy and thus, Stalin’s infamously true reputation as a tyrannical leader and mass murderer of his own people. As David Satter (2011) powerfully observes in It Was a Long Time Ago, And It Never Really Happened Russia and the Communist Past (Yale University Press) the elemental failing of Russia’s leaders and people is their refusal in facing the moral depravity of its Soviet past, including its most savage Joseph Stalin’s terror. In addition to containing its original selected bibliography, prepared in 1974, this essay has been improved upon by adding a new, post-1974 era bibliography, reflecting some of the relevant subsequent developments and their related writings regarding the Gulag camps, Stalinist Russia, and surely, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his related literary works.

Genres: History

50 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 18, 2012

About the author

Dr. Donald G. Boudreau is an internationally recognized expert in the field of economic statecraft. He is also the author of the books, “American Business and Daytime Dramas,” “American Sanctions Against The Soviet Union: From Nixon To Reagan,” "Resistance in the Gulag Archipelago (1918-1956)." and "Joseph Baum & The Newarker Restaurant."
Retired from Federal Government service, for nearly three decades, he held various United States Government appointments with the U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Energy, and finally and extensively, with the U.S. Department of Defense. He holds the Ph.D. degree in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at The University of Geneva, Switzerland, a Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) degree with specialization in public management from Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, and a B.A. degree in Political Science from Montclair State University in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, with Pi Gamma Mu and Pi Sigma Alpha, undergraduate academic honorary, the National Social Science and Political Science Honor Societies, respectively.
Dr. Boudreau served as Rutgers University’s premier Presidential Management Intern as a member of the first class of the Program (1978-80), having been nominated by Rutgers University and selected for such by the then U.S. Civil Service Commission in Washington, DC. The Presidential Management Intern Program (now, the United States Government’s Presidential Management Fellows Program) is a program “designed to attract to Federal service men and women of exceptional management potential who have special training in planning and managing public programs.” Formerly, he served as assistant business administrator for the Town of Irvington, New Jersey.
Dr. Boudreau is the recipient of, including among other awards received during his distinguished Federal Government career, the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence, a U. S. Treasury Department Sustained Superior Performance Award, and numerous other U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Defense performance awards. He moreover, while pursuing his doctoral studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (“the Institute”) at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, was competitively and jointly awarded by the Institute and the U.N. Centre For Human Rights, an Hautes Etudes Internationales Graduate Internship in International Organization that he successfully served with the United Nations Centre for Human Rights at the European Headquarters of the United Nations at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
Dr. Boudreau’s articles on various foreign policy and national security subjects have appeared in the journals, World Affairs, Strategic Review, The International Journal On World Peace, European Security, Diplomacy & Statecraft, International Peacekeeping, and Strategic Analysis (New Delhi). He and his wife, Zoraida de, and their family reside in the southeastern North Carolina fishing village of Calabash, the self-proclaimed international seafood capital, just above the South Carolina line.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author, Dr. Donald G. Boudreau, states, early-on: ‘… this is his senior college thesis … for a political science major and focuses on a chosen serious length manuscript.’ Written in 1974, whilst studying for a BA in Political Science from Montclair State University in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. Dr. Boudreau is now a recognised expert in the field of economic statecraft and the author of the books, “American Business and Daytime Dramas,” and “American Sanctions Against The Soviet Union: From Nixon To Reagan.”

Consisting of approximately 50 pages most of the text considers the works of Solzhenitsyn; so we see, if only briefly, the dire suffering that gulag imprisonment forced upon millions of entirely innocent civilians [more than 70 million according to Dr. Boudreau]. In summary, occasions of resistance (dissent) were rare and futile. Yet, there are interesting (thought-provoking) matters brought to light here …

…’ Why did Russians accept incarceration, torture and slaughter like lambs? Was their fear of government retaliation [aimed at their family] so pervasive that it negated any and all forms of resistance, dissent and protest?

… According to Solzhenitsyn, by 1966, eighty-six thousand former Nazis had been convicted of war crimes [many of those crimes were committed by those responsible for the imprisonment and extermination of European jews]. Nothing less than genocide.

… Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1972) - A quarter of a century ago, with the great hopes of mankind, the United Nations was born . Alas, in the immoral world it, too, became immoral. It is not a United Nations but a United Governments, in which those freely elected and those imposed by force and those which seized power by arms are all on a par. Through the mercenary bias of the majority, the UN jealously worries about the freedom of some peoples and pays no attention to the freedom of others. By an officious vote it rejected the review of PRIVATE COMPLAINTS – the groans, shouts and pleadings of individual, common PLAIN PEOPLE – insects too small for such a great organisation. The UN never tried to make BINDING on governments, a CONDITION of their membership, the Declaration of Human Rights, the outstanding document of its twenty - five years and - thus the UN betrayed the common people to the will of governments they had not chosen.

In 1942 a ‘Declaration of The United Nations’ was made, by 1945 it had been signed by more than 21 states, including, THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” (Edmund Burke).

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” (John Stuart Mill, 1867).

When good men do nothing, they get nothing good done. To be good, one must do good. The Lord commands his people to do good (Luke 6:35; Eph. 2:10).

This, as the author admits, is an academic paper and only makes passing mention of when resistance, dissent, protest occurred WITHIN THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO. Yet, it exposes the resistance debate to a much wider audience - AND RIGHTLY SO.

Yes, none of this is news, but I applaud this work for its attempt to focus minds.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating Paper on the Soviet Gulag

This paper was written in the 70s and contains some powerful proof that Stalin wasn’t a communist as much as a autocrat in the extreme. He uses a lot of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s books which were very popularism the 70s. I agree with a lot here except for the author’s conclusion, he decides to blame the people for tolerating a totalitarian regime. Obviously blaming people hasn’t brought a solution and that hasn’t stopped autocracies. People are manipulated and it’s obvious to me that telling people to resist doesn’t seem to stop much. We need to stop blaming victims.

[Terry Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

RESISTANCE IN THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO (1918-1956), Donald G. Boudreau, 2012,

The author originally presented this information as his thesis paper in college, Thirty-eight years later he updated some of the contents and published it in 2012. I read the Kindle Unlimited Version. There are 815 “locations" in the kindle version. All my notes and highlights are visible.
In light of global retrenchment and in particular the growing sentiments of extremism – left and right of in American politics, I thought it would be useful to present history that compares in context to the growing dissent that appears to be mostly targeted at conservatives, religious organizations, independents and anyone that dissents from the liberal left and progressive agenda.
This book is a detailed account of living death in the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1956 that takes on its true importance from the suggestion that the police system it describes continues to this day.The author’s focus is on Solzhenitsyn and has shown us that his mission is not merely to accuse but rather, to search for remedies that would help the individual overcome the suppression and fear found in a totalitarian regime.
The authors study centers upon the question of resistance, dissent, and protest in The Gulag Archipelago. The questions are: How could the Russian people have gone to their incarceration, torture, and slaughter like lambs? Was fear of government retaliation so pervasive in the Soviet mind that it negated all forms of resisting, dissenting, and protesting? (For many the 2020 Election and Jan 6 Protest is representative of these questions of dissent and resistance. For example, the Soviet Troikas resemble today's judge, jury, and execution by social media mobs, or, the Justice Dept, Courts, Labor Dept or IRS making decisions that appear to transcend moral decency.

In the Soviet gulags, prisoners have been told over and over and had had demonstrated to him that his views, and his conduct in life, and his relationships with people had all been wrong because they had brought him to ruin. They are essentially told that their dissent and resistance is an aberration of thinking and not representative of the wider population; although we know that’s not true. The value of this book is how it parses each form of resistance, its variations, and what countermeasures - the means of eradicating dissent - were implemented by the Soviets through directives, codes, instructions, interpretation of law, definitions of what constitutes an act and repetitive propaganda.

“…we did not draw the distinction between methods and means the old Tsarist Code had drawn. Such distinctions had no influence either on the classification of the charges or on the penalties imposed! The love of justice seems to me to be a different sentiment from the love of people (or at least the two only coincide partially). And in periods of mass decadence, when the question is posed, “Why bother? What are the sacrifices for?” it is possible to answer with certainty: “for justice.” There is nothing relative about justice, as there is nothing relative about conscience.”

There is a resistance to national inequality, and the state manipulated that sentiment and uses it to its own advantage to eradicate dissent and dispense the highest and most cruel forms of psychological and physical punishment.


Solzhenitsyn uses the allusion/allegory of Dantes Inferno in his work “The First Circle” to explain his point.
“ The spirits who inhabited Dante’s First Circle had committed no sins and this, in essence, is equally true of those who inhabit Solzhenitsyn’s First Circle. The gulag was hell on earth, and Solzhenitsyn was its Dante. As in Dante’s, this Circle stands on the edge of the eternal abyss, and descent is easy, frequent and almost inevitable. But Solzhenitsyn deals not with the spirits of the past. His men and women are composed of flesh and blood. All of their dreams are possible. Gleb Nerzhin, the brilliant prisoner-mathematician, distinguishes between the rhetorical objectives of the Bolshevik Revolution and the unequal operative values. What was the Revolution against? Against privileges. What were the Russian people sick of? Privileges..”

Solzhenitsyn is resisting national inequality in the Soviet Union. This problem was foreseen by Marx and Engels as the noted Soviet historian Roy A. Medvedev (1972) documents in Let History Judge.

The basic principle of a free society is that no single individual can come to know absolute truth. Thus, it is believed that the interchange of different ideas will serve to facilitate the maximum attainment of relative, approximate truth. This position is untenable to the Soviet Union with its long tradition of associating freedom with total chaos. And in similar fashion, we too have evolved that American freedoms, rights, criticism, and peaceful dissent is viewed as extremist, and, like the Soviet gulags, the punishment takes multiple and repetitive forms of shaming, blocking and violence because dissent and criticism is now viewed a freedom that brings total chaos and it must be ruthlessly crushed.

[martha hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent analysis and insight.

This was a thesis on the works of Solzenitzen which gets to the heart of Stalins brutal regime through analysis of the literary works of a gulag survivor. What I appreciated most was that he pointed out that most of the people who perpetrated the crimes under Stalin were never brought to justice- this highlights the fact that the United Nations never formed a tribunal to search for the criminals and prosecute them. This has left a void which is now being filled by those who seek the truth about what happened through research and writing and also survivors who have written about their experiences.
The only thing I didn’t like was that there were many misspellings. This detracted from what the writer was saying.

[Sierra5 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok

Ok. Reads like a school paper, just a bit dry for me. Wouldn't recommend this to most unless you are doing research on the real book.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me it wasn't bad but it wasn't good. It was just okay.

[Cory Briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok

It was short. Fascinating for brief periods but short. I thought more needed to be explored and examine. Many people might find this book boring or wanting.

[Frederick Ford · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book detailing the horrors that took place in the Russian Gulags.

[creig speed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief but poignant thesis

Gives a short introduction to the draconian measures of the Stalinist era in the Soviet union. Stalin was the devil incarcerate.