The Unknown Gulag by Lynne Viola
One of Stalin's most heinous acts was the ruthless repression of millions of peasants in the early 1930s, an act that established the very foundations of the gulag. Solzhenitsyn barely touched upon this brutal episode in his magisterial Gulag Archipelago and subsequent writers passed over the subject in silence. Now, with the opening of Soviet archives, an entirely new dimension of Stalin's brutality has been uncovered. The Unknown Gulag is the first book in English to explore this untold story. Historian Lynne Viola reveals how, in one of the most egregious episodes of Soviet repression, Stalin drove two million peasants into internal exile, to work as forced laborers. The book shows how entire families were callously thrown out of their homes, banished from their villages, and sent to the icy hinterlands of the Soviet Union, where in the course of a decade, almost a half million would die as a result of disease, starvation, or exhaustion. Drawing on pioneering research in the previously closed archives of the central and provincial Communist Party, the Soviet state, and the secret police, Viola documents the history of this tragic episode. She delves into what long remained an entirely hidden world within the gulag, throwing new light on Stalin's consolidation of power, the rise of the secret police as a state within the state, and the complex workings of the Soviet system. But first and foremost, she movingly captures the day-to-day life of Stalin's first victims, telling the stories of the peasant families who experienced one of the twentieth century's most horrific instances of mass repression. A compelling story of human suffering and survival in Stalin's Soviet Union, here is a new chapter in the history of the gulag, virtually hidden from sight until now.
Well-researched and informativeDavid Winnick, Tribune Magnificently wide-ranging research. Kate Brown, TLS
Lynne Viola is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, The Best Sons of the Fatherland, co-editor of Russian Peasant Women, and editor/co-editor of six other books. Viola
is a recipient of the Thomas Henry Pentland Molson Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780195187694 |
| ISBN 10 | 0195187695 |
| Title | The Unknown Gulag |
| Author | Lynne Viola |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 2007-04-16 |
| Number of pages | 306 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |