In truth, the genocidal events of the 20th century are often too cataclysmic to wrap our minds around. It’s not due to a lack of compassion; it’s simply that the revolting efficiency and sheer figures involved often dehumanize genocide into abstraction. Continue reading “Deep inside the Soviet Gulag”
Inside the Dark: Applebaum’s Gulag.
If our schools and universities cared about history, Anne Applebaum’s magisterial work, Gulag would be required reading. Continue reading “Inside the Dark: Applebaum’s Gulag.”
The Other Killing Machine
In the introduction to this important book, Anne Applebaum, a columnist for The Washington Post, ponders why the Soviet and Nazi regimes are treated so differently in the popular imagination. Young people who would never purchase Nazi regalia think nothing of sporting T-shirts emblazoned with the Communist hammer and sickle. Continue reading “The Other Killing Machine”
Russian amnesia
This book is a justifiable indictment not only of the Soviet Union but also, even more justifiably, of its successor state, Russia. Continue reading “Russian amnesia”
The World of the Gulag
During a couple of tours as a correspondent in Russia and Germany, I was struck by a remarkable contrast. Visitors to Moscow are happy to snap up memorabilia featuring hammer-and-sickle emblems and images of Lenin and Stalin, but visitors to Berlin wouldn’t dream of buying swastika trinkets or Hitler portraits—even if they were on offer, which they aren’t. Continue reading “The World of the Gulag”
Dark side of the moon
There can hardly be a greater task in 20th century world history than to understand the Holocaust and the Gulag. Why did these related extermination projects happen, and how did similar phenomena occur in other parts of communist Europe in the early 1950s and in Cambodia in the 1970s? Continue reading “Dark side of the moon”
After the Card Game
To date, American troops have picked up the five of spades (Saddam Hussein’s half-brother) as well as the queen of spades (a former Iraqi prime minister). The ace of spades, Hussein himself, is still at large, however. Continue reading “After the Card Game”
Russia’s unwilling builders
Vorkuta, Norilsk and Magadan are words that once evoked terror in millions. Continue reading “Russia’s unwilling builders”
The U.N.’s Human Rights Rituals
When is human rights abuse not human rights abuse? When the U.N. Human Rights Commission is discussing it — or so it seems, judging by that august body’s 59th session, now taking place in Geneva. Continue reading “The U.N.’s Human Rights Rituals”
Seasons in Hell – How the Gulag grew.
On a winter afternoon just before the collapse of the Soviet regime, I paid a call on Dmitri Likhachev, an eminent scholar of medieval Russian literature and an embodiment of the tragic history of his city. (The city was called St. Petersburg when he was born, Petrograd when he was growing up, Leningrad through his long adulthood, and, for the last eight years of his life, St. Petersburg again.) Likhachev was then eighty-four and a director of the literary institute known as Pushkin House. Continue reading “Seasons in Hell – How the Gulag grew.”