The Gulag Archipelago

Josef Stalin was born in 1878 to a poor family in the Russian Empire. He spent a short spell in a seminary before taking interest in revolutionary politics. As a member of the Bolshevik party, he raised funds via illegal means and was sent into exile within Russia. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, he joined the ruling government set up by the Bolsheviks. By 1922, he was a key member in the foundation of the Soviet Union. He became the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924. Stalin quickly assumed total control of the country and instituted many violent policies. As well as rapidly expanding the Gulag system, his agricultural, industrialization, and resettlement plans caused widespread death and famine. Numerous purges against supposed enemies were carried out and political opponents were thrown into the Gulag. More than a million people were arrested under Stalin’s regime and many were executed, either directly or through famine or the Gulag. Stalin died in 1953. After a short period under Malenkov, he was replaced at the head of the Soviet Union by Nikita Khrushchev. In the wake of Stalin’s death, Khrushchev rolled back many of Stalin’s more ruthless policies.

In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn blames Stalin for unleashing many of the most violent parts of the Soviet ideology. He believes that Stalin did not invent the brutalities of the Gulag, but rapidly expanded them for his own personal benefit. Stalin is presented as a fearfully insecure tyrant, someone who locks up anyone who even hints at criticism of the leader. This presents Stalin as weak and afraid, though the general population lives in fear that they might insult Stalin in some fashion. Solzhenitsyn frequently mocks Stalin. He characterizes him as a pompous, narcissistic, and weak leader who commits untold monstrosities without so much as a thought to the people’s suffering. Stalin plays the role of the antagonist in the text. He is the leader of the country whom Solzhenitsyn blames for most of the atrocities he portrays. However, the death of Stalin does not necessarily resolve the issues portrayed in the text. Instead, the traumas inflicted by Stalin persist chronically in the minds of the population and the state.

Lavrentiy Beria was the chief of the NKVD under Josef Stalin during and after World War II. As the head of the secret police, he was given the task of arresting, interrogating, and torturing political opponents of Stalin, as well as many innocent people. Beria was known for his ruthlessness; he was personally accused of rape and torture, while also overseeing the rape, torture, and execution of many people by the NKVD. Beria is credited with expanding and populating the Gulag under Stalin’s orders.

In The Gulag Archipelago, Beria is blamed for the increased brutality of the Gulag over the years. He is the embodiment of the secret police, so any action on their part is sardonically credited to the man at the head of the organization. Beria died not long after Stalin; after attempting to seize power for himself, he was the target of a coup by Nikita Khrushchev. Beria was accused of treason and sentenced to death, allowing Khrushchev to take over. He moved to undo many of the more extreme practices of Beria and Stalin. Solzhenitsyn mocks and celebrates Beria’s death, though he knows that little will change about the system. In Solzhenitsyn’s view, Beria’s is a product of a heinous system, rather than an anomaly.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov is the birthname of Vladimir Lenin. Born in 1870 in Simbirsk, Russia, Lenin became one of the key leaders of the Russian Revolution of 1917. He developed a variation of communist ideology (which became known as Leninism) and served as the first head of government for the Soviet Union. Lenin’s death in 1924 allowed Josef Stalin to assume control of the Soviet Union. According to Solzhenitsyn, Stalin accentuated the inhuman Soviet policies which Lenin had already put in place. Lenin was responsible for the first camps which became the Gulag and the general violent policies of the secret police. Solzhenitsyn criticizes Lenin as a foolish hypocrite who caused vast suffering. Solzhenitsyn references Lenin’s comfortable exile in Tsarist Russia, describing how this paid exile provided Lenin with the opportunity to write and think about revolution. This opportunity allowed Lenin to lead the Russian Revolution, though afterward Lenin instituted policies more barbaric than those which had affected him. The contrast between Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag imprisonment and Lenin’s indulgent exile emphasizes the increased brutality of the Soviet Union compared to the Russian Empire. To Solzhenitsyn, Lenin is a hypocrite who benefited from a system which he then broke in a misguided effort to reshape society.