Nikos Mottas*.
Originally published in atexnos.gr.
Translated from Greek.
One of the most famous and celebrated works of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the “Gulag Archipelago”, has been for a long time a kind of “holy bible” for every anticommunist. Firstly published in 1973, it- supposedly- consists an analytical record of the conditions existed in the so-called “labour camps” of the Soviet Union. Within the framework of the slanderous anticommunist campaign, bourgeois historiography has extensively promoted Solzhenitsyn’s work as a source of arguments about the so-called “Stalinist dictatorship” and “communist crimes” in the Soviet Union.
However, there is a fundamental problem in the work of the deeply reactionary Solzhenitsyn: Gulag Archipelago is a completely antiscientific book, based almost entirely in rumors, speculations, third party opinions as well as interpretations of opinions by Solzenitsyn himself! In other words, the reader of this book becomes “hostage” of a novel type, unverifiable, recording to alleged events by Solzenitsyn and others who supposedly “saw”, “heard” or “learned” something.
Even people who have nothing friendly to say about Stalin admit that Solzhenitsyn’s work is nothing but fairy tales. Let’s see what trotskyite historian and writer Vadim Z. Rogovin writes: “Solzhenitsyn’s work, much like the more objective works of R. Medvedev, belong to the genre which the West calls “oral history,” i.e., research which is based almost exclusively on eyewitness accounts of participants in the events being described. Moreover, using the circumstance that the memoirs from prisoners in Stalin’s camps which had been given to him to read had never been published, Solzhenitsyn took plenty of license in outlining their contents and interpreting them” [1]. In fact, Solzenitsyn edited and cited, according to his own reactionary views, third parties’ testimonials in which he added anticommunist fabrications thus creating the “Archipelago” fairy tale.
Solzhenitsyn’s first wife, Natalya Reshetovskaya, seems to confirm the fact that “Gulag Archipelago” consists a fictional and completely non-scientific book. In her autobiography published in 1974 under the title “Sanya: My Life with Alexandr Solzhenitsyn”, Reshetovskaya actually challenges the validity of what Solzenitsyn writes in “Gulag Archipelago”. According to Reshetovskaya, she was “perplexed” by the fact that the the book was accepted by the western (capitalist) world as “the solemn, ultimate truth”, saying that the significance of his ex-husband’s work had been “overestimated and wrongly appraised”. [2]. Furthermore, Reshetovskaya unveiled that Solzhenitsyn himself did not regard the book as “historical research, or scientific research, but it was rather a “camp folklore” collection!
More or less, Reshetovskaya actually says that “Gulag Archipelago” isn’t a work that should be taken seriously or accepted as a valid source. The fact that Solzhenitsyn’s book is full of lies and inaccuracies is something that can be confirmed by a comparison of the data presented in the “Gulag Archipelago” with the real numbers. There lies a significant problem for the credibility of the much celebrated “nobelist” and former Nazi collaborator Solzhenitsyn: He presents fake numbers!
The following chart, published at the official journal of the Union of American Historians, includes the overall statistical data for the custodial population in the USSR from 1934 to 1953, during a period of Joseph Stalin’s leadership. Let’s now see how the numbers, researched and checked by bourgeois scientists and published at the American Historical Review, refute Solzhenitsyn’s anticommunist fabrications.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of ‘In Defense of Communism’.
Fuentes:
“Gulag Archipelago”: Exposing the anticommunist fabrications of Solzhenitsyn