The Russian writer and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, was imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag from 1945 to 1956.<\/p>\n
His book \"Detente, Democracy and Dictatorship\" (1976) collects these notes on communism:<\/p>\n ---<\/p>\n \" Let me remind you with what sort of system they started.<\/strong><\/p>\n (...) <\/p>\n I repeat it was a system that introduced concentration camps for the first time in the history of the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n A system that, in the twentieth century, was the first to introduce the use of hostages<\/strong>, that is to say, not to seize the person whom they were seeking, but rather a member, of his family or someone at random, and shoot that person.<\/p>\n This system of hostages and persecution of the family exists to this day.<\/strong> It is still the most powerful weapon of persecution, because the bravest person, who is not afraid for himself, still shivers at the threat to his family.<\/p>\n It is a system which was the first\u2014long before Hitler to employ false registration<\/strong>, that is, to say: \"Such and such people have to come in to register.\" People would comply and then they were taken away to be annihilated.<\/p>\n We didn't have gas chambers in those days. We used barges. A hundred or a thousand persons were put into a barge and then it was sunk.<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a system which deceived the workers in all of its decrees<\/strong> - the decree on land, the decree on peace, the decree on factories, and the decree on freedom of the press.<\/p>\n It was a system which exterminated all additional parties<\/strong>, and let me make it clear to you that it not only disbanded the party itself, but destroyed its members. All members of every other party were exterminated.<\/strong> It was a system which carried out genocide of the peasantry; 15 million peasants were sent off to extermination.<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a system which introduced serfdom<\/strong>, the so called \"passport system.\"<\/p>\n It was a system which, in time of peace, artificially created a famine, causing 6 million persons to die in the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933<\/strong>. They died on the very edge of Europe. And Europe didn't even notice it. The world didn't even notice it - 6 million persons!\"\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n ---<\/p>\n
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