Gulag

When we hear of arrests in western society…
When we hear what is described as unfair treatment abusing the ‘rights’ of the arrested person…
It would be enlightening to know what being ‘arrested’ can mean.
The meaning of arrest cannot be more graphically explained than through the words of Alexandor Solzhaneetsyn in the opening chapter of Gulag Archepalego, his Pulitzer Prize winning book about life in Russia. Then, “arrest” terrorized to tens of thousands.(Page 3)

He described arrest as’ a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past….The traditional image of arrest became trembling hands packing for the victim and no one knows what is permitted.’ His words scorch the pages as though synapsed from raw nerve endings to raw nerve endings, arking from memory to fingertips, to be revealed stark and real on the page so that the reader is conjoined to Solzhaneetsyns’ soul searching account of what life in Russia became after 1917 when Tzarist ruled was ended by the rebellion and take over by the workers.

He revealed a history of decades of human suffering that surpassed any before it and yet was unknown to the rest of the world And how did this man describe it?

“We didn’t love freedom enough. In 1917 we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

“The principal revulsion you feel is against the humiliating, repulsive spiritual baseness that once was pride and implacability.”

Solzhaneetsyn asks the questions: What do you need to make you stronger? How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, arrests, interrogations and prison conditions that we cannot imagine were the formidable weapons? Page 130

The reply of an old woman who held fast TO HER Christian and moral principals describes how victory comes. “There is nothing you can do to me even if you cut me to pieces. After all, you are afraid of your bosses and you are afraid of each other and you are even afraid of killing me. But I am not afraid of anything. I would be glad to be judged by God right this minute.”


Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. To the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those however who are unaware of any higher sphere it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.

Solzhaneetsyn saw first hand evil working at its most revolting level. AS Christians we identify and knowledge where good and evil come from. God and Satan respectively. But it is difficult to describe how these forces work within us. Solzhaneetsyn says, if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

There is irony in these sentences because it actually describe what those in power in Russia at that time said they were doing. A human solution to the problem which we now understand to be an evolution based line of thought which assumes that all life emerged from the slime and humans are the most intelligent level of slime. Thereforeit is inherent within us to devise the perfect solution to the problem.

A.S. goes on to write; But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? One and the same human being is at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At time he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.

He acknowledges God in his writing. But it seems that in this writing he chooses not to acknowledge Satan and how he flourishes in an environment and ideology that has no God present.

It is through this window though that there is stark insight that unmasks the terror and havoc that Satan creates.. The freedom we experience in the western world is built around Gods principals but they are being eroded from our laws and we need to make sure we love our freedom enough that we don’t throw it away to those who are trying to convince humanity that it’s the smartest and most intelligent force.