Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps [Hardcover]

*Starred Review* Kizny, a Polish photographer and journalist, spent 15 years researching this amazing book, which contains 550 black-and-white photographs of life in the Soviet Gulag. In 1986 he began collecting eyewitness accounts from former Polish prisoners, and he traveled across the former USSR to find other witnesses and to photograph remnants of the Gulag, which was in operation from the 1920s to the 1980s and consisted of a network of concentration camps spread across the most northerly reaches of Europe and Asia. The harshness of the Arctic climate, the starvation levels of the diet, the length of the sentences, the routine brutality and depravity of the guards, the absence of proper medical care and of adequate heating and clothing, and the lack of hope inevitably produced a devastating mortality rate. Tens of millions of the convicts were frozen, starved, or worked or beaten to death. The photos gathered here range from official archival snapshots, showing both inmates and their captors, to scenes of enormous construction projects and snowbound ruins. Kizny has added his own photographs of the abandoned camps or work projects and included a brief history of the camps and personal accounts of survivors. These rare and historically significant photographs can only hint at the appalling horrors committed within the camps, and the importance of the book cannot be overstated. George Cohen
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A massive volume of photos, history an memoirs... the atrocity known as the Gulag... Read this book. (Linda Turk Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal 20041031)

Hundreds of photos of gulag inmates and their surroundings... introduced by short and damning essays...an essentially arresting and haunting compilation. (Library Journal 200412)

A stark visual reminder of the tens of millions of zeks, or putative convicts, who perished. (Carlin Romano Philadelphia Inquirer 20050324)

Unique... certainly the widest ranging and most complete album of Gulag photographs ever published. (Anne Applebaum New York Review of Books 20041204)

Massive... What makes Kinzy's book distinct from previous Gulag exposés is its powerful pictorial testimony. (Louise Abbott Montreal Gazette 20041128)

Had Alexander Solzhenitsyn's forte been gathering photographs he would have created a book like Tomasz Kizny's. (Globe and Mail 200505)

Listed in January Magazine's Best of 2004: Extraordinary... unforgettable... Gulag is much more than a book: it's a lifework. (Aaron Blanton January Magazine 200601)

Rare and historically significant photographs can only hint at the appalling horrors... the importance of the book cannot be overstated. (George Cohen Booklist )

Powerful and moving... It's tough and many of the photographs will send a chill down your spine. (M. Horton Edmonton Journal )

Impressive... a stunning indictment of Soviet totalitarianism... many memorable images in this powerful book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. (T. Sexton Choice )

An extraordinary book. (January Magazine )

A historic photographic record of the Soviet Gulag and its legacy.

The Gulag was a network of labor camps and penal colonies run by the Soviet security organizations. While forced labor and internal exile had a long history in Russia, the Gulag evolved into a devastating tool of political suppression and massive industrial production. From the early years of the Revolution to the final years of the USSR, millions labored and perished within this system.

Gulag covers the history of the Gulag with incredible essays and firsthand narratives by former prisoners. The text is accompanied by photographs provided by the prisoners, survivor groups and state archives as well as contemporary photographs that show the camps as they look now.

Each chapter covers a key camp or work project of the Soviet penal-industrial complex:

• Solovki, the monastery that was the birthplace of the Gulag system
• The White Sea Canal
• Vaigach, the doomed humane camp
• The Theater in the Gulag
• Kolyma, the deadly Siberian gold rush
• Vorkuta, coal mining above the Arctic Circle
• The Railroad of Death

Each chapter has:

• A concise introductory essay
• Formerly banned and previously unpublished archival photographs
• Detailed chronology of the camp
• Prisoners' accounts of life and death in the camps and colonies
• Contemporary photographs
• Accounts of survivors some of whom still live near their former camp or colony.

Gulag is a remarkable pictorial history of a harrowing era of the twentieth century.

(200412)

Tomasz Kizny is a Polish photographer and journalist.

(20041201)