As a memoir, I find it very fascinating, though many of the individual stories are the result of games of telephone and hardly reliable; same as all oral histories. And, of course, the numbers suggested are deeply outdated by the fall of the SovUnion and the opening of the Soviet archives.
The ‘rubber-band’ effect of disillusionment with a worldview is on full display, certainly, considering Solzhenitsyn’s youthful Soviet ideology. His resulting Tsarist apologia is not frequent, but pops up just often enough to be discomfiting.
Anyone else read this and have thoughts?
I’m reading it online, but they appear to be just scanned print pages. It’s ~1800 pages there. Split into three volumes.
I see. I’m going to look into for real. Thank you for bringing that up