Before Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"
shocked the Western world, some readers already knew of prison life in the
Soviet Union, the Eastern bloc and other Communist countries. This is a
selection of excerpts from nine widely read books from this gulag
literature.Long before Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich" (1962) shocked the Western world with its frightening description
of a typical day in a forced-labor camp during the Stalin era, some readers in
the West already knew of prison life in the Soviet Union, the Eastern bloc, and
other Communist countries. A powerful genre of "gulag" literature had emerged
in the late 1930s and developed throughout the cold war. Books by survivors
revealed in graphic detail the systematic implementation of a totalitarian
police state that induced terror in its citizens through torture, imprisonment
in slave labor camps, and death. In "Enemies of the State", Donald and
Agnieszka Critchlow have selected excerpts from nine of the most widely read
books from this gulag literature. The stories are riveting and inspiring. They
are dramatic by their nature and illustrate humanity at its heroic best. But
they have historical value too, because in addition to providing a ghastly
record of Communist terror, they also explain why Western readers developed
such deep mistrust of "peaceful coexistence" with any Communist nation.; Memoirs from survivors of Communist prisons confirmed beliefs that the
Communists could not be trusted. They told readers that Communist regimes
operated through deception and denial, and that sympathetic visitors to the
Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam, and Cuba were too often misled by the
carefully staged performances of Communist officials. In short, gulag
literature reinforced among American anti-Communists the idea of an apocalyptic
struggle between communism and Western Christendom.
