so I want to tell you about a book today
the book is called The Gulag Archipelago
you ready the book is called The Gulag
Archipelago and it's by a russian author
soviet author named Alexander
Solzhenitsyn who was in they do like
archipelago concentration camp system
for a very long time he had a very hard
life he was on the Russian front when
the Germans invaded Soviet Union in the
early stages of World War two now Hitler
and Stalin had signed a non-aggression
pact and Hitler invaded the Soviet Union
anyway and from what I've been able to
understand the Soviets had prepared an
invasion force for Europe at that point
but were not concerned with having to
defend their territory and so they were
caught completely unawares by Hitler's
move and conditions on the Russian front
were absolutely dreadful and
Solzhenitsyn was a soldier on the
Russian front and he wrote some letters
to one of his friends which were
intercepted complaining about the lack
of preparation and and using bitter dark
humor to describe the situation and the
consequences of that was that he was
thrown into a work camp the Soviet
system relied on work camps and so those
were large labor camps of people who
were essentially enslaved many of whom
were worked to death often froze to
death working in conditions that were so
dreadful that they're virtually
unimaginable Solzhenitsyn spent a very
large number of years in these camps
sometimes in a more privileged camp
because he was an educated man and
sometimes in worst camps he also
developed cancer
later and wrote a book about that called
cancer ward which is a brilliant book so
he had a very hard life there's there's
just no way around that to be on the
front and then to be in a concentration
camp and then to have cancer that's
that's pretty rough now he wrote The
Gulag Archipelago he wrote a book called
one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
first that was published in the early
1960s when there was a brief thaw Stalin
was pretty much out of the picture by
the end of the 1950s there's some
indication that he was murdered by
Khrushchev and a Khrushchev became
premier of the Soviet Union after Stalin
and there's some indication perhaps that
Stalin was either murdered by Khrushchev
and a set of his cronies or when he was
very ill just before he died was not
helped at least by wasn't provided with
any medical attention because of the
intervention of Khrushchev and his
cronies now there's some indication as
well at that point that Stalin who is an
absolute absolutely barbaric in every
possible way you could imagine was
planning to start a third world war and
he was certainly capable of doing such
things because he had already imprisoned
or killed tens of millions of people now
just after Stalin died there was a bit
of a thaw in the Soviet Union with
regards to internal repression in the
early 1960s
Solzhenitsyn published a book called one
day in the life of Ivan Denisovich which
was a story about one day in the life
his life really inside one of these
so-called gulag archipelago camps now he
called it the gulag archipelago because
an archipelago is a chain of islands and
so Solzhenitsyn likened the work camp
system in the Soviet Union which is made
up of isolated camps distributed across
the entire state he likened that to a
series of islands in hence hence the
metaphor and one day in the life of Ivan
Denisovich was one of the first
publications released in the Soviet
Union that dared make public what had
happened inside these camps at least
initially now that saw I didn't last
very long but that book had a tremendous
effect it's a short book it's worth
reading after that he spent he wrote a
number of other books which are also
he's great he's a great literary figure
in the same category I would say as
Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky which is like
really saying something you know those
those two are perhaps the greatest
literary figures who ever lived with the
possible exception of Shakespeare he
wrote this book called The Gulag
Archipelago which is published in three
volumes each of which is about 700 pages
long the first one details the origin of
the oppressive Soviet system at least in
part under Lenin and then it's full
fledged implementation under Stalin and
the depths of while Solzhenitsyn
estimated the deaths in in internal
repression in the Soviet Union that's
something approximating 60 million
between 1919 and 1959 now that doesn't
count the death toll in the Second World
War by the way now people have disputed
those figures but they're certainly in
the tens of millions and the low-end
bounds are probably 20 million and the
high-end bounds are nearer what so
Solzhenitsyn estimated he also estimated
that the same kind of internal
repression in Mao's China cost a hundred
million lights and so you can imagine
that the genuine historical figures
again are subject to dispute but
somewhere between fifty and a hundred
million people and one of the things
that's really surprising to me and that
I think is absolutely reprehensible
absolutely reprehensible is the fact
that this is not widespread knowledge
among students in the West any of this
and it's because your education your
historical education if you started to
describe it as appalling you would
barely scratch the surface these were
the most important events of the 20th
century and they're barely covered at
all in standard historical curriculum
you know something I would presume about
World War Two and about the terrible
situation in Nazi Germany in the death
of 6 million gypsies and Jews and
homosexuals in the concentration camps
in Nazi Germany but my experience with
students has been that none of them know
anything about what happened as a
consequence of the repression of the
radical left in the 20th century and I
believe the reason for that is that
the communist system had extensive
networks of admirers in the West
especially among intellectuals and and
still in fact does which is also equally
reprehensible and I believe that one of
the consequences of that is that this
element of history has been under under
what would you say under examined and
certainly very little attention has been
brought to it in the public school
curricula and there's absolutely no
excuse for that it was the worst thing
that happened in the 20th century and
that's really saying something because
the 20th century was about as bad as it
gets and so and the fact that these
these massive these deaths on massive
scale occurred and the fact that we
don't know that deep inside our bones is
is testament to the absolute rot of the
education system