From elementary schools to the professional world of academia, the most popular occurrence of mass homicide remains the Holocaust
of the World War II era. As the ethnic wars of Rwanda remind us, however, to focus on only one such event is myopic. In Gulag, Anne Applebaum introduces readers to the world of Soviet
concentration camps, exposing a brutality worse than Hitler’s, but not nearly as familiar to the common man. Using excruciatingly vivid details, Applebaum describes the living conditions people faced within the Gulag. We see the struggle for food and other supplies, as well as the difficulties in maintaining personal hygiene. The beds that people slept in were filled with lice and other insects—enough to make a reader want to go and change his own sheets. It was an existence in which one looked out only for himself, and it was enough to make one lose his sense of humanity. Stalin wanted the Gulag to comprise of self-sufficient entities. Production and industrialization were promoted, and
prisoners were required to meet established quotas. As a result, many prisoners subscribed to tufta; they would find any way they could to take breaks from the demands placed upon them while acting like they were working as hard as possible. Millions were held in these concentration camps, and Soviet society as a whole feared the possibility of getting thrown into the Gulag as political prisoners. It was one of the many tactics that Stalin used in order to maintain his control over the citizens of the USSR. Applebaum’s book is a work of true scholarship that is vital to the understanding of the former Soviet Union.