Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
** See also the example under HiddenInPlainSight
Added DiffLines:
* HiddenInPlainSight: At one point when news of the atrocities leaked and caused enough pressure that a respected writer was invited to the camps to inspect the conditions, the guards successfully prevented the obviously starving and abused prisoners from catching his eye and prompting closer inspection by... threatening them into sitting still and silently on the ground in a large group and throwing large tarpaulin sheets over the lot of them. The writer, rather than seeing inmates who he might want to take a closer look at and talk to, simply saw the sheets and didn't think to wonder what they were doing there. It seems like the guards themselves could hardly believe they got away with that.
Added DiffLines:
* RefugeInAudacity: The book contains a few examples both of people standing up to the guards and inexplicably not being punished, and examples of total farce that should have exposed the whole hideous affair but the guards successfully bluffed their way through.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 29 (click to see context) from:
* InherentInTheSystem: Solzhenitsyn makes it very clear that the gulags were no abberration of Stalin: from the very beginning, the Soviet system only survives through the terror and oppression of the people.
to:
* InherentInTheSystem: Solzhenitsyn makes it very clear that the gulags were no abberration of Stalin: from the very beginning, the Soviet system communism only survives through the terror and oppression of the people.
Changed line(s) 32 (click to see context) from:
* KidsAreCruel: Once they adapt to their new environment (far faster and more thoroughly than an adult) they certainly are. Solzhenitsyn describes one event when children (about 12 years old) lured a nurse into a cell with dozens of them by lying about one of them being sick, and then pinned her down and barricaded the doors, doing everything to her from gang-rape to biting and beating. Unlike some of the terrible things they did for food (stealing a weaker adult's clothes and then selling them, leaving the adult to starve and freeze) this particular atrocity had no discernible motive beyond ForTheEvulz, and if asked about it the savage children would probably not have had the moral vocabulary to explain it.
to:
* KidsAreCruel: Once they adapt to their new environment (far faster and more thoroughly than an adult) they certainly are. Solzhenitsyn describes one event when children (about 12 years old) lured a nurse into a cell with dozens of them by lying about one of them being sick, and then pinned her down and barricaded the doors, doing everything to her from gang-rape to biting and beating.beating to gang rape. Unlike some of the terrible things they did for food (stealing a weaker adult's clothes and then selling them, leaving the adult to starve and freeze) this particular atrocity had no discernible motive beyond ForTheEvulz, and if asked about it the savage children would probably not have had the moral vocabulary to explain it.
Changed line(s) 46,47 (click to see context) from:
** So long as they didn't go against their fellow Blue Caps or the state, they could do pretty much anything they wanted; which they did. A school professor is giving a lecture on something you don't like? You can forbid him from saying anything else. You saw an apartment that you would like to live in? You could have it, and if it happens to already be occupied, just throw the tenant into a cell on whatever charge comes to mind. A woman catches your eye? She's yours, so go ahead and take her.
* TakeThat: Mostly sarcastic parenthetical asides and footnotes to Soviet officials and policies, but some of those are aimed at Western persons (at least three to Bertrand Russell, for instance) sympathetic with the Soviet Union (though Russell criticized the USSR and Marxism, so he may have been misinformed about that).
* TakeThat: Mostly sarcastic parenthetical asides and footnotes to Soviet officials and policies, but some of those are aimed at Western persons (at least three to Bertrand Russell, for instance) sympathetic with the Soviet Union (though Russell criticized the USSR and Marxism, so he may have been misinformed about that).
to:
** So long as they didn't go against their fellow Blue Caps or the state, they could do pretty much anything they wanted; which they did. A school professor is giving a lecture on something you don't like? You can forbid him from saying anything else. You saw an apartment that you would like to live in? You could have it, and if it happens to already be occupied, just throw the tenant into a cell on whatever charge comes to mind. A woman catches your eye? She's yours, so go ahead and take rape her.
* TakeThat:Mostly sarcastic parenthetical asides and footnotes to Soviet Aimed at communist officials and policies, mostly Soviet but some of those are aimed at Western persons (at a few in the West too, b(at least three to Bertrand Russell, for instance) sympathetic with the Soviet Union (though Russell criticized the USSR and Marxism, so he may have been misinformed about that).
* TakeThat:
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 27 (click to see context) from:
* HolierThanThou: Many of the Communist prisoners being purged still think themselves loyal to Stalin's regime, convinced that it was all a mistake that they were arrested, whereas everybody around them are of course scum and deserve every moment of their sentence. Solzhenitsyn distinguishes between them and the true socialists who carried their beliefs in their hearts and not on their sleeves--and were arrested because of it.
to:
* HolierThanThou: Many of the Communist prisoners being purged still think themselves loyal to Stalin's regime, convinced that it was all a mistake that they were arrested, whereas everybody around them are of course scum and deserve every moment of their sentence. Solzhenitsyn distinguishes between them and the true socialists who carried their beliefs in their hearts and not on their sleeves--and were arrested because of it.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
* KnowNothingKnowItAll: The infamous propagator of pseudoscience, Trofim Lysenko, pops up. When his "ideas" on science and agriculture [[{{Pun}} go to seed]], he insists that [[NeverMyFault it was the fault of the agronomists]] who followed his orders.
Changed line(s) 37 (click to see context) from:
** The "58s", as the political prisoners are called, have to share their camps with the "socially friendly" elements, the thieves and career criminals, and Solzhenitsyn makes it very clear that the romanticization of the thieves has no basis at all in reality, particularly as the thieves could be trusted by the camp administration to keep the 58s under strict control.
to:
** The "58s", as the political prisoners are called, have to share their camps with the "socially friendly" elements, the thieves and career criminals, and Solzhenitsyn makes it very clear that the romanticization of the thieves has no basis at all in reality, particularly as the thieves could be trusted by the camp administration could trust the thieves to keep the 58s under strict control.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 44 (click to see context) from:
** The KGB, or "Blue Caps" as they are more commonly referred to in the book. They are described as men who are totally obedient to the Party and feel little to no empathy towards others, endowed with what essentially amounts to unlimited power. Nobody was out of their reach, from the lowest farmer, to ranking government or military officials.
to:
** The KGB, NKVD, or "Blue Caps" as they are more commonly referred to in the book. They are described as men who are totally obedient to the Party and feel little to no empathy towards others, endowed with what essentially amounts to unlimited power. Nobody was out of their reach, from the lowest farmer, to ranking government or military officials.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 24 (click to see context) from:
-> "Two interrogators would take turns. One would shout and bully. The other would be friendly, almost gentle. Each time the accused entered the office he would tremble — which would it be? He wanted to do everything to please the gentle one because of his different manner, even to the point of signing and confessing to things that had never happened."
to:
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
Not So Different has been renamed, and it needs to be dewicked/moved
Changed line(s) 39 (click to see context) from:
* NotSoDifferent: Solzhenitsyn recalls how he started to become haughty and cruel as an officer and concludes that under the right circumstances, most people could become brutal interrogators.
to:
* NotSoDifferent: NotSoDifferentRemark: Solzhenitsyn recalls how he started to become haughty and cruel as an officer and concludes that under the right circumstances, most people could become brutal interrogators.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 24 (click to see context) from:
-> Two interrogators would take turns. One would shout and bully. The other would be friendly, almost gentle. Each time the accused entered the office he would tremble — which would it be? He wanted to do everything to please the gentle one because of his different manner, even to the point of signing and confessing to things that had never happened.
to:
-> Two "Two interrogators would take turns. One would shout and bully. The other would be friendly, almost gentle. Each time the accused entered the office he would tremble — which would it be? He wanted to do everything to please the gentle one because of his different manner, even to the point of signing and confessing to things that had never happened."
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* GoodCopBadCop: One of the many, many techniques used by the gulag interrogators. Rather effectively, too.
-> Two interrogators would take turns. One would shout and bully. The other would be friendly, almost gentle. Each time the accused entered the office he would tremble — which would it be? He wanted to do everything to please the gentle one because of his different manner, even to the point of signing and confessing to things that had never happened.
-> Two interrogators would take turns. One would shout and bully. The other would be friendly, almost gentle. Each time the accused entered the office he would tremble — which would it be? He wanted to do everything to please the gentle one because of his different manner, even to the point of signing and confessing to things that had never happened.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 32 (click to see context) from:
* MoralMyopia: Stalin's regime never misses a chance to rant about the (admittedly dreadful) purges of the Tsars, even with the even more massive purges they themselves.
to:
* MoralMyopia: Stalin's regime never misses a chance to rant about the (admittedly dreadful) purges of the Tsars, even with the even more massive purges they themselves.themselves stage.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 25 (click to see context) from:
* [[HolierThanThou More Communist Than Thou]]: Many of the Communist prisoners being purged still think themselves loyal to Stalin's regime, convinced that it was all a mistake that they were arrested, whereas everybody around them are of course scum and deserve every moment of their sentence. Solzhenitsyn distinguishes between them and the true socialists who carried their beliefs in their hearts and not on their sleeves--and were arrested because of it.
to:
* [[HolierThanThou More Communist Than Thou]]: HolierThanThou: Many of the Communist prisoners being purged still think themselves loyal to Stalin's regime, convinced that it was all a mistake that they were arrested, whereas everybody around them are of course scum and deserve every moment of their sentence. Solzhenitsyn distinguishes between them and the true socialists who carried their beliefs in their hearts and not on their sleeves--and were arrested because of it.
