The History of the Gulag by Oleg V Khlevniuk
The human cost of the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system in which millions of people were imprisoned between 1920 and 1956, was staggering. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others after him have written movingly about the Gulag, yet never has there been a thorough historical study of this unique and tragic episode in Soviet history. This groundbreaking book presents the first comprehensive, historically accurate account of the camp system. Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk has mined the contents of extensive archives, including long-suppressed state and Communist Party documents, to uncover the secrets of the Gulag and how it became a central component of Soviet ideology and social policy. Khlevniuk argues persuasively that the Stalinist penal camps created in the 1930s were essentially different from previous camps. He shows that political motivations and paranoia about potential enemies contributed no more to the expansion of the Gulag than the economic incentive of slave labour did. And he offers powerful evidence that the Great Terror was planned centrally and targeted against particular categories of the population. Khlevniuk makes a signal contribution to Soviet history with this exceptionally informed and balanced view of the Gulag.
Annals of Communism, Yale's acclaimed series, adds another major documentary history to its listMore than 100 documents from the Russian archives are translated, and interspersed with Russian historian Khlevniuk's extensive analysis. The result is a fascinatingly detailed depiction of that horrific symbol of the 20th century, the Soviet prison camp system.-Publishers Weekly 'Precise and balanced in its use of sources, Stalin has many advantages over its competitors... if this book is a classic, it will be for it's laconicism and lucidity, and it's authoritative separation of the incontrovertible from the probable and possible in Stalin's motivation.'-Donald Rayfield, TLS. -- Donald Rayfield TLS
Oleg V. Khlevniuk is senior research fellow at the State Archive of the Russian Federation. He is author of The History of the Gulag and coeditor of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936 and The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36, all published by Yale University Press. He lives in Moscow.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780300092844 |
| ISBN 10 | 0300092849 |
| Title | The History of the Gulag |
| Author | Oleg V Khlevniuk |
| Series | Annals Of Communism |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
| Year published | 2004-11-10 |
| Number of pages | 448 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |