LMS’s Reviews > Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back: A Memoir of the Gulag > Status Update

“There is no communism without state planning of production, and there is no planned production without forced labor.”

This book is harrowing, infuriating, but I’m having trouble putting it down. I’ve been reading little bits while eating lunch, when I wake up, while waiting in line. He’s a sharply insightful and poignantly descriptive author with little pity for himself even when describing moments of great distress.

“The Westerners do not know how to do anything—neither to open a lock with a nail, scrape off plywood with glass, light a lamp without matches, nor to work on a hungry stomach.”

Soviet superiority.

“Experience has taught me that no arguments or evidence can dissuade a person who considers him or herself a communist. Only Soviet reality itself can do this.”