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<\/i>, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was published on this day in France in 1973. He had won the Nobel Prize in 1970. Arrest followed the publicaiton of Gulag Archipelago<\/i>, and years of exile … and eventual triumph and vindication … but still. So many horrors. Ted<\/a> and I recently had a conversation about this book. I think it’s on his list to-be-read this next year. We both are a bit insane right now – trying to read SHORT books as the end of the year approaches – so that we can add books to our have-read-list for the year. Meaningless competition – but fun. Anyway, I read Gulag Archipelago<\/i> years ago, every damn word of it. It’s huge, obviously – a huge book – but once you pick it up, it’s hard to put down. The prose is compulsively read-able. Once you start, you cannot stop. You cannot believe the detail he goes into. The intellect on this guy. (Here’s more information<\/a> on him.) The years and years of imprisonment … honing his skills of observation to such a devastating degree that he is able to lay out the entire system, brick by brick by brick … how it actually worked, not just physically – but psychologically. It’s a truly stunning achievement, one of the most important books of the 20th century, certainly – if not ever. You want to know how things work<\/i>? Even if it seems insane from the outside? This is the book to read. Here’s an excerpt and some of my blather on the book.<\/a> And my observations here<\/a> are relevant too, I think. Where there is silence … there is horror. Untold, unspoken, unshared. But the silence is louder than a scream. Solzhenitsyn spoke out of the silence, the institutional silence – the silence of exile and imprisonment – of hidden wars and famines, while the world looked the other way. Silence. Czeslaw Milosz, Polish poet who grew up under Communism – and eventually won the Nobel Prize – said during his Nobel Prize speech: “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” Solzhenitsyn was that pistol shot. <\/p>\n\n