Anyone read this?

Jordan Peterson episode of Joe Rogan

>false dichotomy fallacy
What did he mean by this?

I mean, either he was making stuff up or the Soviets were and both have pretty good motivations to do so. That by itself isn't really a convincing argument.

Even if the camps were half as bad as the author says that's still not exactly a redemption of Soviet Russia. Literally millions still killed. Sure, it's bad to exaggerate that stuff but it's not like the Soviets are walking away with their hands clean either way.

I haven't read the book and know nothing about the statistics but I came to the thread to see if the book was worth reading.
>either he was making stuff up or the Soviets were
This simplifies the issue to favor Solzhenitsky. It's not a 1:1 ratio of people telling the truth or lying. "The Soviets" comprises loyalists to the former regime, former guards and officers (some of which could have regretted their actions and would confess), people looking to get revenge on the former regime, and other observers who would be aware of the number of people being interred.

Soviets were good boys, didn't do nothing.

The books are amazing

Do not read anti-Soviet propaganda. Only read approved works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, published by Peking Press.

Yes, I read it for a Russian History class
>still remained unquestioning of their political beliefs?
yes I hated communism before I read it and now I have more ammo against it

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, is it the new Gulag Archipelago?

Kulak says what?

Y'all are fucking dumb if you think Soviet administrators would purposefully falsify records decades before the collapse of the USSR. For what fucking purpose unless they magically knew ahead of time? Where did this vast conspiracy of administrators and archivists who simultaneously believed the government was going to collapse and worked in it anyway start? Furthermore, if they believed the government was going to collapse, why would they protect the reputation of said government by falsifying records?

If you believe, still, that higher ups had ordered them to falsify records, that still assumes that those higher ups thought that the regime would end-- sooner rather than later. It's fucking ridiculous.

>Soviets were and both have pretty good motivations to do so.

I disagree. We're not talking about press releases. We're talking about classified, internal documents. You're suggesting that someone said, "Right, in about 60 years our country will collapse and the Westerners will read our records. Let's make everything look better than it is to confuse them, even though this will make our own job much harder."

...

you think that's the only reason one might consider doing so ? Now don't get me wrong i'm not trying to comment on whether it was tampered with or not ,nor am i bothered with solzhenitsyn's data. It's just your reasoning is falling way shorter than it should.

The data isn't even as important. The stories of brutality mean far more and the question is has he falsified those. I don't believe he has and in any case it's probably the work of the century.

>fallacy

This is reddit

Well what possible reason could there be?

Put yourself in the position of a camp director. You're not there on holiday, or to satisfy your masochistic urges. You have production targets to meet. Suppose 10% of your prisoners died. That's 10% of your workforce gone. What do you do? Write back to Moscow, request more """intellectuals""" to refill your ranks? Or pretend that everything's okay, miss your target, and end up in the gulag yourself?

>the facts don't matter, whats important is the feels

Why else would someone do it?

>The data isn't even as important. The stories of brutality mean far more
>meanwhile on Veeky Forums, serious discussion of whether or not the Holocaust actually happened is going on in the Anne Frank thread

Well it's a book of certain quality regardless of it being true. I don't think it's false, the same with Gulag Archipelago, but he might have had wrong sources on how many were exactly killed. I don't think he was lying in any particular event so the net worth of kills being 60 million or 60 thousand doesn't exactly change the scope and quality of the work, or at least how a reader would experience it.

It does change it as a tool of propaganda which accounts for the vast majority of interest in the work

Right but it's presented as a work of history, which should make you very VERY suspicious of a non-adherence to data.

The difference between 60 million and 60 thousand if it were a work of fiction wouldn't make so much of a difference, at least from a narratological perspective, but it makes a HUGE difference when you're talking history.

>ITT: GULAG denialism
Well, after all the Holocaust denialism and the apologias for slavery I can't really say I'm surprised...

>because some people deny X you can't deny anything or else you'll be equivalent to them

It's not presented as a work of history alone. It's a memoir, a collection of stories, legal philosophy, religion AND history.
Not really. It's a massive work which talks about so many things, it's much, much more about singular stories than history. And the truthfulness lies in the stories and not historiography he might have gotten wrong in 1960 while he was writing multiple copies of the same work fearing for his life hardly having all the information he needed.
Have you even read it?

You're still revealing your own ideological interests. There is no such thing as "truthfullness". What you speak of are simply experiences and you make of them what you will.

>300,000 people died in 9/11!
>What the fuck? No they didn't...
>WHY ARE YOU DENYING TERRORISM?

I never tried to hide my ideological views. Communism is a blight upon the earth.
There is such a thing as truthfulness. Has he intentionally lied and twisted events to make them fit his narrative? I don't think he did, in fact the work is extremely well argumented and researched from what I can tell as as far as law goes.

>There is such a thing as truthfulness

Have a nice day friend

DUDE SPOOKS LMAO

The very act of writing and heralding the book is a supreme form of cherry picking.
What of the truthful experiences of starving farmers in Colonial India? Or the truthful experiences of black prisoners in the South?

History was no picnic for most of the world despite Communism being the supposed "blight"

>The very act of writing and heralding the book is a supreme form of cherry picking.
How? He wrote a comprehensive memoir of his own experience even devoting the a chapter on the best people in the Gulag administration actively seeking good things in it.
He spent 10 years in it and it provided him with a kind of enlightenment and he put it to paper. It's a magnificent piece of literature, regardless of him not fitting your views and fitting mine.
>What of the truthful experiences of starving farmers in Colonial India? Or the truthful experiences of black prisoners in the South?
Yes those were also pretty bad. They lived in terrible conditions and were often directly or indirectly killed. What's your point exactly?
>History was no picnic for most of the world despite Communism being the supposed "blight"
Indeed, communism isn't the only bad thing in the world. Colonial exploitation and slavery were also terrible.

So why are we not speaking of books about these experiences or books on these subjects heralded as Time's "Best Nonfiction of the 20th Century"?
Your spurious claim of it being a "magnificant" work despite lack of any influence among subsequent writers or intellectuals says everything.

>So why are we not speaking of books about these experiences or books on these subjects heralded as Time's "Best Nonfiction of the 20th Century"?
How the fuck should I know lad, I'm not the Time and am not making their lists. Maybe because they aren't as good?
>work despite lack of any influence
I believe the fact that we are having this discussion 50 years after he wrote it says everything. Have you read it?

you don't keep accurate records of genocide. ever. literally this has never once happened in the history of the world.

>we are talking about it thus it is important to talk about it

Nice logic.

You're showing total lack of honesty. Why do you believe the Times decided it merited above all over non-fiction books the title of best of the 20th century?
If you can cite any respected writers who praise the book and not simply ideologically spurred journalists then I'll take the text seriously but it never has been.
Its clear you praise it for the same reason the Times does, because it is in your clear interests to pretend so

>you don't keep accurate records of genocide. ever. literally this has never once happened in the history of the world.

This is a self asserting attitude. Who is to say it did not indeed happen at least once?

To hide true numbers from their own people. Let's say the real number of displaced people on the Trail of tears was 150,000. But the 'official' records said it was only 5,000.

Now you can't completely deny it because there will be multiple accounts. But it only occurring to 5,000 people is a lot better than it occurring to 150,000 people. It lets people in that country believe, yes I know some bad things occurred, but they are no where near as bad as people make it out to be.

>To hide true numbers from their own people.

These are the figures that were in the state top secret archives you fool. They were never intended to be seen publicly

>Assume X is genocide
>Therefore, X is genocide

What are the stats on accurate records of prison guards, because this is what they were?

>These are the figures that were in the state top secret archives you fool. They were never intended to be seen publicly
How did we find out about things in wikileaks? Administrators can't guarantee the absolute loyalty of everyone that will ever have access to the data. If you want to keep the idea of how many you actually killed from the public, why even record the real number?

Sure put a number down, because you can't make the idea of the Gulag vanish. But you can minimize the number. That way even if someone 5,10, 15 years later comes back to the records the only number they will see is the fake lower one.

The only point in recording the number is to make the Soviet Union seem less bad than it may have really been.

Keep in mind the Soviets had lots of history of altering other 'official' records and literally vanishing people from existence. So don't assume the Soviets had some sort of fastidious penchant for accurate record keeping, like the autistic Germans.

Well they clearly were pretty fucking good at hiding the information given it didn't come out until the entire state fell.
Your theory is entirely flimsy conjecture

I read it this year and it's probably the best thing I've read this year alongside O'Connor and MacIntyre. I was taken aback by how powerful it was, I highly recommend it.

I guess we shouldn't believe in the holocaust because there were no Nazi records huh?

No because the Holocaust was documented immediately after it occured during the bloody occupation of Germany

I just wanted to talk about the damn book.

they documented the dead bodies after they were buried and burned?

I mean I believe the holocaust happened but not muh 6 million figures
youtube.com/watch?v=nxbV3RsyQwI

Shut up porkie

Check & mate.

Irrelevant. The fact is we have an ample array of primary sources to determine the scale of the Holocaust regardless of what it is due to its circumstances of its revelation.

Indeed. I don't think it changed me much, but it was a ride. His snippets of how others lived were amazing to read and can constitute short stories people should check out themselves.
His spiritual insight was interested and honestly to my liking. His rejection of material wealth as well as having God as the source of all peace was nice and comfy. His pokes at Sartre and Russel made me laugh because they got btfo so hard. His political commentary was on point and his irony was well placed.
I liked the story of the boy who grew up in the camp and was rediscovering Christianity for the first time without any outside influence. It's a real shame his writings were lost.

>(((lost)))

>porkie

/leftypol/ shouldn't you be at jobcentre?

It was pretty funny how as soon as he mentioned (((their))) role in the early Soviet Union, he went from America's propaganda darling to its black sheep.

What a fucking awful thread

Meme book, meme thread. Go figure

No, this is your fault.

i literally haven't been to Veeky Forums in ages and i saw the sticky had changed. i read the sticky and clicked the link for bookzz.org/. i then searched for the Gulag Archipelago because Prof.Jordan Peterson always talks about it. I went back to Veeky Forums and this was the second post in the catalog

i feel like this is a sign i should read it

You got any evidence for that claim?

It's good, you should.

You sound like the type of person who enjoys convincing yourself of what you'd like to believe is true so its perfect for you.

It's a fantastic work, really.
Well Solzhenitsyn never had them and the man died from abuse.
Try The Jews by Hilaire Belloc. It is surprisingly good. Is Solzhenitsyn any good on his (((greatest ally))) books? Wikipedia is pretty Jewish of course, but it says it's just bad historiography (which it may very well be).
Sounds like you are one of those faggots who can't appreciate art unless he agrees with the author.

Up until I learned it's fiction, sure.

yes you should

I'd say it's essential 20th century non-fiction. One of the most crucial works.

>One of the most crucial works.

Yet its practically never thought at Universities, especially outside the US. Strange

Be careful, we have a salty leftist who thinks value is assessed by academics alone.

Oh yes, lets trust /pol/ instead for our recommendations

The Gulag Archipelago is our recommendation.
I've never seen Solzhenitsyn mentioned there and you can't really expect them to read 2k pages of anything.

I read it in college, but in a history class on Russian history taught by a Russian woman in her late 50's

Yeah which is why it was only started to be talked about here and there because the anti tranny meme guy recommended it

t. never been to university, any university

Not sure why you people insist on talking about what goes on in Universities.

I literally have a degree in Literature, try again

Currently reading this, but unfortunately I'm at one of those times of the year where I just don't really want to read anything. It seems well-written and interesting, but I think that I'd struggle to really get into any book at the moment. Probably wait a few weeks then give it another go.

Are you outside the US? Misread that part desu, I can see why non-Burgers wouldn't get caught up in it, but it's a highly shilled book in the states.

It's read here too for Russian students, that is students studying Russian language.
I had no idea he mentioned it and I've picked it up here months ago.
Believe it or not it is a classic and people do read him. He had 3 votes for Archipelago in the top 100 and few for Denisovich.
And still, such a philistine? Interesting.
It's very fluent, it's much more like Tolstoy than Dostoevsky. It's also very segmented so reading bits and feeling nice because the "plot" is finished after each of those mini stories.

Yes I'm well aware, which is a detriment to its reputation. Its a non-entity in Western Europe

>3 votes

Wow

I'm from western Europe and it's false that it's a non entity. It's just not mainstream. It is read for class in college.
Hopefully next year, I'll keep the shill up.

>It is read for class in college.

[citation needed]
Not in my nation at least

It is here. He did win a Nobel after all and that tends to keep things in the curriculum. Ivan Denisovich is more popular of course.

>The only point in recording the number is to make the Soviet Union seem less bad than it may have really been.

Really? The only reason? How about productivity figures? The central planner needs to know how much work he can expect to get from a prisoner before he dies, so it's important to know what the attrition rate is. New camp construction? If you're going to send a million new Solzhenitsyns up north, you have to know where there are vacancies available. Supply provision? Prisoners need food, tools and medical equipment. These need to be shipped from halfway across the country, because they're in the middle of fucking nowhere. How do you plan to supply the camp if you don't know how many people there are?

A prisoner's term will eventually expire, at which point he must either be released or resentenced for another round. If he's dead at that time, but he's not recorded as dead, what are you supposed to do? Sentence a corpse to hard labour? That'd make for an interesting work of fiction a la Gogol, but is there any evidence of that actually happening? Release a corpse, and send him back home? Don't forget that this is a planned economy -- you can't just release him and let him fend for himself. You need to find him a house and a job.

People can't just disappear in a totalitarian, centrally planned state. Everyone needs to be registered somewhere. Stalin can't oppress you if he doesn't know whether you're even alive or not.

>unironic monarchist fundie-orthodox's totally super-true, totally-not-agitprop, no really guys! book about truthy facts that no sources actually corroborate but you should believe in 1000%

No.

but 500 gorillion

I laugh my ass off at the fact that the criteria for what constitutes evidence completely changes when the Soviet Union is brought up.

Anti-communism truly is a religion.

religion has been one of the most effective control mechanisms in human history, and america did it better than almost anyone else. no surprise they applied the basic principles to other aspects of culture, like foreign policy/propaganda.

>An albino from Australia is going to hack our cabinets with his Didgeridoo

Stop being ridiculous.

>non-fiction

Stop baiting.

I'm late to this but, the problem here is you're assuming that Soviet State was run by entirely logical people. It was one giant fuck up after another with them, intentional or otherwise. Ivan Borisovich doesn't want comrade bossman to know he's been fucking up his gulag, but he also doesn't want put in too much effort; there's going to be number fudging and bribes and tons of shit of the books. We are talking about Russians here after all.

>People can't just disappear in a totalitarian, centrally planned state
>implying

If you're suggesting that that the Soviet bureaucrats inflated the numbers by an order of magnitude, then the onus of proof is on you, especially if the direction of the fudging seems to run contrary to their interests.

Again, put yourself in Ivan Borisovich's shoes. Comrade Stalin sent you 100 prisoners to dig a portion of the White Sea canal. It's a very optimistic target, and it won't be easy to meet in the best of circumstances. However, the circumstances are not the best and 20 of your men die of frostbite. do you:
a) Record everything as being fine, the workforce is in top physical condition, and when your section of the canal fails to be completed, the blame can fall on no one but yourself.
b) Claim the prisoners were sickly, possibly because Comrade Anton gave them the wrong medicine, or Comrade Vassiliy is a counterrevolutionary swine who is sabotaging your efforts, or a freak chance of nature that couldn't have been avoided, and some workers died. You are doing the best that is possible given the circumstances, but unless your workforce is replenished the digging target will be hard to meet.

>People can't just disappear in a totalitarian, centrally planned state
>implying

Which one is it going to be? The Cheka monitors your every step, and cracks down on the smallest hint of unpatriotic sentiment? Or the Cheka doesn't even know who is alive or dead in the country, and if you want to get arrested you have to knock on their doors yourself?