Gulags Quotes

“Some Russian anticommunist writers such as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, and many U.S. anticommunist liberals, maintain that the gulag existed right down to the last days of communism. If so, where did it disappear to? After Stalin's death in 1953, more than half of the gulag inmates were freed, according to the study of the NKVD files previously cited. But if so many others remained incarcerated, why have they not materialized? When the communist states were overthrown, where were the half-starved hordes pouring out of the internment camps with their tales of travail?”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

“If there were mass atrocities right down to the last days of communism, why did not the newly installed anticommunist regimes seize the opportunity to bring erstwhile communist rulers to justice? Why no Nuremberg-style public trials documenting widespread atrocities? Why were not hundreds of party leaders and security officials and thousands of camp guards rounded up and tried for the millions they supposedly exterminated? The best the West Germans could do was charge East German leader Erich Honecker, several other officials, and seven border guards with shooting people who tried to escape over the Berlin Wall, a serious charge but hardly indicative of a gulag.”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

“In her mind she was free; only her body was captive.”
― Nina Gagen-Torn, Gulag Voices: An Anthology

“The monsters don’t run the gulags and the death camps and the reeducation centers. Regular people do. If they all had the balls to say no, the likes of Halsey, Zhou, or Stalin could never do it all on their own. Could they?”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Glasslands

“But why wake up all that past? Why reopen the old wounds of those who were living in Moscow and in country houses at the time, writing for the newspapers, speaking from rostrums, going off to resorts and abroad? Why recall all that when it is still the same even today? After all, you can only write about whatever “will not be repeated.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“ისინი უკვე დიდი ხანია თავს ქალებად აღარ გრძნობდნენ, ყველანი მხოლოდ პატიმრები იყვნენ - მათ სქესს მნიშვნელობა დაეკარგა.”
― Anna Eskuri, აღმა, დინების წინააღმდეგ