The Gulag Archipelago.

[sweetface77]

Comments

[domety]

Solzhenitsyn is a clever man. Sometimes he even accepted he had been wrong.

"twenty-five years"
Fortunately, almost nobody had to experience it wholly.

[sweetface77]

Wholly? Because they were pardoned, or died before they could carry out the full sentence? I am hoping that a lot of people were pardoned/set free... because the whole book is filled with death/illness/etc. that it's hard for me to remember the positive parts. =\

[domety]

The 25-years imprisonment was brought in (istead of the death penalty) in 1947 (though in 1950 the death penalty was restored for some political accusations). After the death of Stalin, in 1953-1956 the most part of political prisoners (as well as many real criminals, who had got short penalties) were liberated. The number of political trials greatly diminished, and they became rare exlusions. Also the laws were changed. The penalties longer then 15 year were abolished, only the clemented could get 20 years (though the death penalty began to use wider). It's hard to say how many people perished during the imprisonment, but now it's generally accepted that Solzhenitsyn exagerated the number of people condemned and the rate of mortality.

[sweetface77]

But weren't people getting shot/executed during the late 1940s? (I don't have the book with me right now so I can't verify