This week I finished:

Gulag—The Story: A three-part documentary on Gulags made in France and posted on a channel called Free Documentary—History, which looks full of documentaries that look interesting, though I haven’t watched any others.

I’m about halfway through the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago. I’m curious other views of the Gulag system, the USSR, Stalin, and the system that I knew existed but hadn’t learned about. Since I’m learning about how tyranny happens and how to stop it, learning about arguably the most totalitarian and deadly such system is relevant to my next book.

So a couple documentaries are giving me alternative views from Solzhenitsyn. It’s as awful as he describes, though the documentaries lack his personal inside view. They are more methodical but less visceral.

I see why people call The Gulag Archipelago one of the most important pieces of writing of the twentieth century. The situation could easily happen again. It results from dominance hierarchy forming without be checked. It is a strong argument for enforcing the Constitution, a protection from tyranny.

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The Gulag Archipelago: How Solzhenitsyn Exposed Soviet Reality: Another documentary about the gulags. This one focused on Solzhenitsyn more but still was about the camps.

I recommend all these documentaries, but also read The Gulag Archipelago when you can. You won’t regret it. It teaches about humanity and what actually happened.

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