What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[El Kabong]

@Batman have you ever read 'Gulag Archipelago' by Alexander Solzhenitsyn? I'm learning about that and it sounds quite interesting.

[Batman]

@Batman have you ever read 'Gulag Archipelago' by Alexander Solzhenitsyn? I'm learning about that and it sounds quite interesting.

I can't say that I have, it doesn't look like my type of thing to be honest, I always look at those types of books but always think that they are going to be a massive slog, especially when I see that it is 3 volumes as well.

I've only started reading again over the last few days, I'm planning on getting Uncle Silas finished over the weekend and then going back to revisit one or two of my old favourites, I'm thinking about reading True Grit again.

[El Kabong]

@Batman have you ever read 'Gulag Archipelago' by Alexander Solzhenitsyn? I'm learning about that and it sounds quite interesting.

I can't say that I have, it doesn't look like my type of thing to be honest, I always look at those types of books but always think that they are going to be a massive slog, especially when I see that it is 3 volumes as well.

I've only started reading again over the last few days, I'm planning on getting Uncle Silas finished over the weekend and then going back to revisit one or two of my old favourites, I'm thinking about reading True Grit again.

I'm taking the coward's way out and doing the audiobook of 'Gulag Archipelago' ....not sure if you're open such things but I find it helps to pass the time to listen to something and every so often I get tired of music.


I will say it is emotionally and psychologically a bit draining to encounter this book....I wonder whatever became of the people and the answer is always dead or broken and then I attempt to wrap my mind around how humans could do those horrible things to each other.....and not just "oh this is my fellow human" but children turning in their parents! There was no room for loyalty in a Soviet's heart to anyone but the State and the numbers of people who suffered...the sheer numbers of them! Also it wasn't JUST Stalin who did these purges, Stalin was the best at it without question he's probably the most bloodthirsty tyrant this side of Genghis Khan! But V.I. Lenin was also a horrible despot and he's rarely if ever called out for such.


How ANYONE could or would choose to be a Communist or Socialist after reading Solzhenitsyn is beyond me....to have a society with 0 free will....terrifying

[El Kabong]

HOLY SHIT!

In 1922 The Soviet GPU (Joint State Political Directorate) arrested some engineers including Peter Palchinsky, Nikolai von Meck and A. F. Velichko. A. F. Velichko had been in charge of military transportation...he was shot. Nikolai von Meck, he attempted to increase the size of freight trains and not worry about heavier loads, he was shot.....he was accused of wrecking roadbeds and rails so that there would be no transportation should the State need it.


SHORTLY THEREAFTER


The State wanted average freight train loads doubled and tripled and any engineer who protested became known as "limiters" and they were then shot for what Solzhenitsyn described as "their lack of faith in possibilities of Socialist transport"



That's not even the worst of it, getting shot was getting off easy!!!

[Master]

You can pick out extreme elements of any "ism" including socialism if you try. It should be about community and all the positive dimensions it brings.

[El Kabong]

You can pick out extreme elements of any "ism" including socialism if you try. It should be about community and all the positive dimensions it brings.

Yeah SHOULD BE and IS are completely different things too. Children ratted out their parents to the GPU dude....children sent their folks away to be worked to death in gulags. Stalin had people digging ship canals with their bare hands in weather you could barely keep vodka from freezing in and when the canal for the Volga was completed it was too shallow for any boats to use....but it was never about boats or shipping it was a means to an end...a means to the end of 3,000 people for that one canal.

Lenin was no better and Marx?!?! Marx is only celebrated because he never held political power. HAD he held political power like Stalin or Lenin or Hitler, he most certainly would have seen the end of millions upon millions of lives because that is what ALWAYS happens. Look at China and Mao! Pol Pot! Ceausescu! Tito! Fidel! Hugo Chavez! All filthy fucking murderers who never had the games played with them that they played with the civilians....you like Socialism? You can have it, I don't want it.

[Pastor John]

I'm reading Tim Tebow's "Shaken"...he autographed it as my Christmas present.