| Alexander Dolgun's Story - an American in the Gulag
(1975)
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| Front Cover |
Book Details |
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| Genre |
Biography |
| Subject |
Dolgun, Alexander |
| Publication Date |
1/1/1975 |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Publisher |
Alfred A. Knopf |
| Extras |
Dust Jacket; Dust Jacket Cover |
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| Personal Details |
| Store |
2nd & Charles |
| Purchase Price |
$2.00 |
| Acquire Date |
11/20/2020 |
| Condition |
Very Good/Good |
| Rating |
0 |
| Links |
Library of Congress
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| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
HV8959.R9 D57 |
| Dewey |
365/.6/0924 B |
| ISBN |
0394494970 |
| Edition |
[1st ed.] |
| No. of Pages |
370 |
| First Edition |
Yes |
| Rare |
No |
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| Notes/Review |
This is an individual-sized serving of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archeplago.
Dolgun was an American citizen working for the US Embassy in Moscow in 1948 when he was arrested and sentenced (administratively; that is, without trial) to 25 years in the gulag. This is his story, from the moment of arrest to his return to America (I don't think this is much of a spoiler: the fact that he wrote the book means he survived).
I probably read too many of these stories of man's inhumanity to man. But I find such stories, strangely, to be ... uplifting isn't exactly what I'm looking for, but I'll use it: uplifting. People survive such ordeals because they believe they can. This is not a sufficient condition, but a necessary one: not everybody who believes they can survive survives, but if one doesn't believe they'll survive, they won't.
A sort-of opposite of that also makes an appearance: the belief that political prisoners in the camps deserved to be there. The State certainly believed that. The MVD/MGB/KGB operate under the assumption that they are never wrong. And the "professional" prisoners - the criminal class - all believed that the politicals were guilty, too. If they weren't guilty, they wouldn't be prisoners.
So, the interesting parts, to me, were how Dolgun managed to employ his wits, tenacity, and optimism to manage to survive. How did he handle the tortures of interrogation? How did he obtain assignments in the camp that would facilitate his survival? How did he avoid the killing work of the mines and other hazardous jobs?
The book isn't totally bleak. One of the survival mechanisms is the search for humor. I have little doubt that Dolgun included as much of the humorous as he could recall, and at the same time left out many of the daily degradations he experienced.
He met Solzhenitsyn when he was still in Moscow after his release, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is partly based on someone Dolgun knew. |
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