GULAG, the acronym for Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei, meaning Main Camp Administration, refers to not only  the administration of the concentration camps, but also the system of Soviet salve labour itself, in all its forms of varieties: labour camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women’s camps, children’s camps, transit camps. Even more broadly, ‘Gulag’ has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the ‘meat-grinder’: the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labour, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths.

Although Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s great work–The Gulag Archipelago–was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature, the details, the crime, suffering and evil in Gulag is still not known to most people all over the world, while the evil of Nazi’s concentration camp has almost been fully revealed(just recall Steven Spielberg’s movie, Schinder’s List and Empire of the Sun).

"Gulag: a history", a book won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize by Anne Applebaum, offers us the full, moving story of Gulag’s countless victims. I dare to say that, after reading it, everyone who keeps at least a bit of  conscience, will grant this book to be a triumph.

Several weeks ago, when I came across this book in a book store, I bought it without consideration.
Such great book, such great reading experience.