Gulag

A History of the Soviet Camps

Anne Applebaum

This landmark book uncovers for the first time in detail one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century: the vast system of Soviet camps that were responsible for the deaths of countless millions. Gulag is the only major history in any language to draw together the mass of memoirs and writings on the Soviet camps that have been published in Russia and the West. Applebaum examines why the Gulag has remained relatively obscure in the historical memory of both the former Soviet Union and the West – and argues that our grasp of twentieth-century history will be incomplete unless we come to terms with it.

First published:: 2003
Published by:: Allen Lane/Penguin
Length:: Hardcover 610 pages

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About the author

Anne Applebaum was born in Washington, DC in 1964. She studied Russian history and literature at Yale and International Relations at the London School of Economics and St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. She began working as a journalist in 1988, when she moved to Poland to become the Warsaw correspondent for the Economist. She eventually covered the collapse of communism across Central and Eastern Europe, writing for a wide range of newspapers and magazines. She has been a writer at the Economist, foreign and deputy editor at the Spectator and columnist for the Evening Standard. In 2002 she returned to Washington, where she is now a columnist and a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post. She lives in Washington with her husband and two children.