The work of A. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago". Summary

From the thirties to the sixties in the Soviet Union, the administration of the camps of forced mass detention in custody was entrusted to the Main Directorate of Camps (Gulag). A. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago" (the summary of the work is set out below) was written in 1956, in the journal version it was published in 1967. As for the genre, the author himself called it an art study.

The Gulag Archipelago. Summary of part 1 on the prison industry, Part 2 on perpetual motion

The narrator enumerates the ways of getting into the Gulag of all who were there: from guards and guardians to prisoners. Types of arrests are analyzed. It is stated that they did not have grounds, but were caused by the need to achieve a benchmark by quantity. The fugitives were not caught or attracted, only those who were convinced of the justice of the authorities and of their innocence received the term.

The narrator examines the history of mass arrests in the country immediately after the October Revolution. The meaning of the powerful and sinister 58th article added to the Criminal Code of 1926 is explained. It was composed in such a way that it could become a punishment for any act.

The course of a typical investigation based on the ignorance of their rights by Soviet citizens and the ways in which investigators implement a plan for converting prisoners into prisoners are described. Then investigators and even ministers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs became prisoners, and along with them all their subordinates, friends, relatives and just acquaintances.

The narrator describes the geography of the archipelago. From transit jails (he calls them "ports") they leave and they are approached by wagons-zaki (ordinary cars, but with bars for transporting up to 25 prisoners in each compartment), called "ships." The prisoners and real ships and barges were transported with deep and dark holds, where neither the doctor nor the convoy had ever descended.

The Gulag Archipelago. The summary of part 3 of the fighter-labor camps, part 4 on the soul and barbed wire

The narrator sets out the history of the creation of camps in Soviet Russia in which people were forced to work. The idea of their creation was put forward by Lenin in the winter of 1918, after the Socialist Revolution was suppressed. The idea of the leader was fixed by an instruction in which it was clearly stated that all able-bodied prisoners should be compulsorily employed. In the Decree on the Red Terror, such labor camps were called "concentration camps."

Since they, according to Soviet leaders, lacked rigor, the leadership was concerned about the creation of the Northern Camps, which have a special purpose and inhuman order. After all the monks were expelled from the Solovetsky Monastery , he received prisoners. They were put in sacks, for infringements threw in punishment cells where kept in harsh conditions.

Free labor of prisoners was used to lay the ground Kem-Ukhtinsky tract through hard-to-pass swamps and forests, in summer people were drowning, in winter they froze. The roads were also built beyond the Arctic Circle and on the Kola Peninsula, and often the prisoners were not provided with even the most primitive tools and built manually.

The prisoners escaped, one group even managed to get to Britain. So in Europe they learned about the existence of the Gulag. Books began to appear about the camps, but Soviet people did not believe it. Even Gorky, who was told the truth by a minor prisoner, left Solovki without believing, and the boy was shot.

In the history of the Archipelago there were great constructions, for example, the White Sea Canal, which took an uncountable number of lives. Echelons sent construction workers to the construction site, where there was still no plan, no precise calculations, no equipment, no tools, no normal supplies, no barracks.

Since 1937 the regime in the Gulag has become tougher. They were guarded with dogs under a bright electric light. Worse than the guards were criminals who were allowed to plunder and oppress "political" with impunity.

Protection for women in the camps was a deep old age or a noticeable ugliness, beauty was a misfortune. Women worked in the same jobs as men, even in logging. If any of them became pregnant, then during the feeding of the child she was transported to another camp. After the end of feeding the child was sent to the orphanage, and the mother - to the stage.

There were children in Gulag. Since 1926 they have been allowed to judge children who committed murder or theft from the age of twelve. Since 1935, they were allowed to use the shooting and all other penalties. There have been cases when eleven-year-old children of the "enemies of the people" were sent to the Gulag for 25 years.

With regard to the economic benefits of prisoners' labor, it was very doubtful, because the quality of forced labor left much to be desired, and the camps did not self-pay.

Suicides in the Gulag were few, they escaped - more. But the fugitives were sold back to the camp by a hostile local population. Those who could not escape, gave themselves an oath to survive, by all means.

The advantage of the Archipelago was an infringement on the thoughts of the man: there is no need to join the party, the trade union, there were no production or party meetings, no agitation. The head was free, which contributed to a rethinking of the old life and spiritual growth. But, of course, this did not concern everyone. Most of the heads were occupied with thoughts about the daily bread, the need for labor was perceived as hostile, and the inmates were considered rivals. People who were not enriched with spiritual life, the Archipelago embittered and corrupted even more.

The existence of the Gulag was also detrimental to the rest of the country's ineligious part, forcing people to fear for themselves and their loved ones. Fear made betrayal the safest way to survive. The brutality was brought up and the line between good and evil was blurred.

The Gulag Archipelago. A summary of part 5 on penal servitude, part 6 on the reference

In 1943 Stalin again introduced the gallows and penal servitude. In the thirties, not everything was deified in his thirties, there was a peasant minority that was sober to the townspeople and did not share the enthusiastic attitude of the party and the Komsomol to the leader and the world revolution.

Reference in was legalized in the 17th century. By the thirties of the 20th century, it had become a temporary paddock for those who would go under the ruthless knife of the Soviet dictatorship.

Unlike other exiles, wealthy peasants were deported to uninhabited remote places without food and agricultural crops. Most were starving. In the forties began to send out entire nations.

The Gulag Archipelago. The summary of part 7 on what happened after the death of the leader

After 1953 the Archipelago did not disappear, it was time for unprecedented indulgences. The narrator believes that the Soviet regime will not survive without it. The life of prisoners will never be better, because they receive punishment, but in fact the system on them takes out their mistakes, that people are not what the Advanced Leninist-Stalinist doctrine intended them to be. The state is still tied up with a metal rim of the law. The rim is - there is no law.

The summary of the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn's autobiographical work , does not give the reader the opportunity to put on the guise of the prisoner, to penetrate the warped consciousness of the native of the Archipelago, which, according to the author's intention, was aimed at a detailed description of the camp and prison realities in the full text of the work.