The Gulag Archipelago Vol. I - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In this episode of Canonball we discuss Volume I of "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which was published in 1973.
One correction: Since recording this I have found reports that Solzhenitsyn did apply for U.S. citizenship in 1985. I cannot see that he ever received it, though his wife and children did.
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00:00 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Life
13:18 The Function Of A Prison System For A State
16:20 The Skeptical Approach To Complex Political History
19:45 How To Approach "The Gulag Archipelago"
20:37 Beginning Of Passages
28:54 The Various Waves Of Arrests
32:47 "Limb By Limb, Beginning With Its Owl Tail, The Ravenous Maw Would Devour Itself"
34:34 The Weaponization Of A Word
39:44 Article 58 Section 10 "Propaganda Or Agitation" And The Notions Of Guilt And Innocence
42:37 Interrogation And Solzhenitsyn's War Diary Burned In The Lubyanka
45:47 The Motivations And Status Of The Secret Police
48:09 "Do What You Want Without Me, I Want No Part Of It"
50:22 "As Though It Were A Natural Phenomenon"

[@hazchemel]

.. started reading Solzhenitsyn about '82, having an amateur's interest in historic and modern Russia. His writings seemed to me, introspective and interrogating himself with all his knowledge of the darkness in human character.
The stark raw reality of seeing his world truly must have been very hard work not to submerge.

[@alanpennie]

All bad penal systems tend to rely on confessions, which are usually easy to extract from helpless prisoners.

[@IjkPPp]

On 7 July 1945, he was sentenced in his absence by Special Council of the NKVD to an eight-year term in a labour camp. This was the usual sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time.[30]
The first part of Solzhenitsyn's sentence was served in several work camps; the "middle phase", as he later referred to it, was spent in a sharashka (a special scientific research facility run by Ministry of State Security), where he met Lev Kopelev, upon whom he based the character of Lev Rubin in his book The First Circle, published in a self-censored or "distorted" version in the West in 1968 (an English translation of the full version was eventually published by Harper Perennial in October 2009).[31] In 1950, Solzhenitsyn was sent to a "Special Camp" for political prisoners. During his imprisonment at the camp in the town of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan, he worked as a miner, bricklayer, and foundry foreman. His experiences at Ekibastuz formed the basis for the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. One of his fellow political prisoners, Ion Moraru, remembers that Solzhenitsyn spent some of his time at Ekibastuz writing.[32] While there, Solzhenitsyn had a tumor removed. His cancer was not diagnosed at the time.
In March 1953, after his sentence ended, Solzhenitsyn was sent to internal exile for life at Birlik,[33] a village in Baidibek District of South Kazakhstan.[34] His undiagnosed cancer spread until, by the end of the year, he was close to death. In 1954, Solzhenitsyn was permitted to be treated in a hospital in Tashkent, where his tumor went into remission. His experiences there became the basis of his novel Cancer Ward and also found an echo in the short story "The Right Hand."
Hope this helps