this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Here's what you say is "no answer except a quote from his ex-wife:"
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was an anti-semitic Nazi sympathizer, and was arrested as such. His fiction is based on the folklore of the gulag system, and archival evidence and historical texts paint a much clearer picture of the soviet prison system. He's essentially Yeonmi Park but for the USSR.
Here's a real quote:
>The German army could have liberated the Soviet Union from Communism but Hit1er was stupid and did not use this weapon.
From an excellent thread going over his many ideological failings:
200 Years together is a completely different book and an ex-wife as a single source is not enough for me.
Okay, let's assume his storys in the Gulag books are fictipn. What is your general opinion on gulags under Stalin?
The point of 200 years together being listed is that we know that he's a liar and a conspiracy theorizing anti-semitic Nazi, so trusting his word alone on socialism makes no sense. We have every reason not to trust him and no reason to trust him, especially when he contradicts archival evidence on how prisons in the GULAG administration functioned.
As for soviet prisons, they varied quite a lot depending on severity of the crime and location, with many being pretty progressive for the time. Visitation, open air prisons, and a focus on rehabilitation was common. I already linked Russian Justice, but you should absolutely read it.
This sounds a little different.
Yep, Wikipedia is written largely by westerners using western consensus, even if such consensus has inaccuracies or better information is available post-opening of the soviet archives. You can even see it uses the Gulag Archipelago as a source, despite it being a work of fiction.
We will not be able to agree. But you can believe what you want. I do too.
I suppose to a certain degree that's true, I just don't trust the personal account of a Nazi that has been known to lie and that contradicts archival evidence.
But you'll believe USSR reports? To me, viewing your claims in this comment thread, you seem to dismiss anything that doesnt fit your narrative as baised or uninformed.
Yes, I trust official documentation historians use these days after the opening of the soviet archives over the personal account of a known liar, conspiracy theorizing Nazi whose own wife said he was lying.