The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956

"The squirrel," Solzhenitsyn writes, "had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel. That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them." The factory director was arrested. Solzhenitsyn concludes, "Now that's what Darwin's natural selection is. And that's also how to grind people down with stupidity." Social Darwinism can take many forms, all insidious, all destructive of the human condition.

Also, look for the 1970 movie: . . . . “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” . . . directed by Caspar Wrede 1929-1998, . . . starring Sir Tom Courtney 1937-, based on the 1962 novel by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008 and, of course, the original novel in various editions.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn knew the importance of owning a gun: "What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example, in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?"

Libraery needs to provide "place a hold" button to confirm.