Soviets branded the most innocuous of actions as criminal.

Look at one of many examples that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave in The Gulag Archipelago for how the Soviet Union would condemn someone to many years in the Gulag as an “enemy of the people” for the most innocuous of “crimes”: A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so …

Gulag prisoners changed their language to demonstrate that nothing in the Archipelago was genuine.

Look at what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago how Gulag prisoners (“zeks”) modified everyday words to demonstrate to one another that nothing in the Archipelago was genuine to them: How much self-ridicule there is in this world! “We are . . . not the real thing!” The zek language dearly loves and makes …

Soviets extracted much extra labor from prisoners for little extra reward.

Look what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago about how the Soviets extracted much extra labor from prisoners for little extra reward: Percentages above 100 conferred the right to supplementary spoonfuls of kasha (those previously taken away). What a merciless knowledge of human nature! Neither those pieces of bread nor those cereal patties were …