The Gulag Archipelago

“That Marxism is not a science is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. One would even feel awkward to refer to it as a science. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, even the social sciences can predict an event—when, in what wa…”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW's, of course, not for treason to the motherland, because it was absolutely clear ev…”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“History sometimes does know revenge, a sort of voluptuous and delayed justice, but chooses strange forms for it and unexpected executors of its will.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Thanks to ideology the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing calculated on a scale in the millions.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Here is a riddle not for us contemporaries to figure out: Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not? What kind of disastrous path lies ahead of us if we do not have the chance to purge ourselves of that putrefaction rotting inside our body? What, then, can Russia teach the wor…”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But 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…”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing…”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.' Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history…”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“We didn't love freedom enough.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words…By means of art were are sometimes sent—dimly, briefly—revelations unattainable by reason.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org

“Our envy of others devours us most of all.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, archive.org