Each month, I document how my reading and research merged and branched out.

Below you will find all the things I engaged with over the month of March. It includes book reviews, books added to my relentless TBR, random history bits, videos and writing projects. Also scattered about is the artwork that inspired me.

Down the rabbit hole we go!

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Notes from the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky

In March, I gleefully finished reading Daniel Beer’s The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars. It was one of those history books that was so engaging that it provoked me into reading everything I could on the subject. Subsequently, I wrote an essay on the wives of the Decembrists, sent into Siberian exile in the early 19th century.

There was a small section devoted to Dostoevsky’s time in exile, arguing that it formed the basis for much of his philosophy. I decided to read Notes from the House of the Dead for both a first-hand account of Siberian exile and to better understand how Dostoevsky came to his profound conclusions about life, suffering, love and religion.

There were moments of this book that were absolute genius, typical Dostoevsky passages that made me smile from recognition. In particular, the genesis of Crime and Punishment is clearly there, developed from an acute study of his fellow prisoners.

I am working on a reading guide to Dostoevsky that uses the history of Siberian exile and his experiences within it to offer a route into his work.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”

It never really feels like spring until I commence my read of The Wind in the Willows. It is always immensely refreshing to put down my pen and highlighter and simply enjoy the read — a practice I have to pursue more.

On this year’s reread, I realized that there was much more to appreciate in Grahame’s winding descriptions of the natural world. He vividly captures the enchantment of nature; it was a pleasure to lose myself in childhood once more and experience the world in such a magical way.

Reading

I am beginning a study of William Blake for the month of May, and I must admit I am quite intimidated. Blake is a poet that I have consciously avoided for some time, knowing that whenever I did choose to engage with him, I would need to focus all my energy on understanding his symbolism and philosophy.

I have already begun Northrop Frye’s A Fearful Symmetry, but truthfully it has just made me more intimidated — it takes me an hour to get through ten pages. I commenced with Blake because it is part of my year’s reading plan to read more about personal spiritual experiences. Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated!

I am also dipping into Leaves of Grass, another spring staple. Perhaps a few springs from now I will finally have it finished.

Lastly, I will be teaching a class on The Odyssey, so I am slowly breaking into my beloved Fagles edition. I have a few supplemental books I plan on using as well, but any additional recommendations are always appreciated!

Books added to my TBR

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Rabbit holes

Here are a few bits and bobs that I thought about this month:

1. The woodworking of Pennsylvania artist George Nakashima.

2. Considering this line from George Saunders:

   

3. Learned that divorce in the Roman Republic was quite informal; a husband could simply instruct his wife to leave — tuas res tibi habeto (“take your things with you”).

4. The Cottingley Fairies. A photographic hoax that purported to prove the existence of fairies. I think the photos are really quite charming.

   

5. Thinking about the simple beauty of moss and moss gardens.

6. Benjamin Lay. Pennsylvania colonist, Quaker, abolitionist and vegetarian.

   He made all his own clothes and lived in a cave that housed 200 books.

   

7. Discovered the iconic inscription on Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon in Rome: “Here lies Raphael, by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.”

8. Videos I watched and want to dissect more:

Things I wrote about

This past month, I released part 2 of my series on the Russian Gulag. As I mentioned in my introduction to the series, this is a project that means a lot to me. My hope is to spread more awareness about a little-discussed event in Russia, already a country massively misunderstood by the West.

Each essay in the series covers a different step of a prisoner’s typical journey through the Gulag. Next, we will explore the transport of prisoners to the camps.

As always, I am curious about your engagements over the past month — what sorts of things inspired you? Here’s to another month of learning!

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” — John Locke

Catch up on the rest of the series:

Introduction

“At the very threshold [of the prison], you must say to yourself: ‘My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die – now or a little later … from today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.’” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago)

You have now been arrested. Do not bother inquiring about the reason. You will learn all about the charges — fabricated, of course — against you when you begin your interrogation.

Your cell is five by six and a half feet. There are no windows. The light above you will burn day and night. It is best to get comfortable. Who knows how long you will be here.

*

Lubyanka. Lefortovo. Butyrka. Sukhanovka. These names were enough to strike fear through the heart of any Russian — they were the worst prisons of the Soviet Union. Sukhanovka, for example, was infamous for its torture:

“You’d not be able to question those who had been there: either they were insane and talking only disconnected nonsense, or they were dead.” (Solzhenitsyn)

After arrest, you would be taken to prison. Here, you would learn of the charges brought against you and undergo interrogation with the goal of producing a signed confession.

Solzhenitsyn describes the reality for many:

“Neither our education, nor our upbringing, nor our experience prepares us in the slightest for the greatest trial of our lives: being arrested for nothing and interrogated about nothing.”

As historian Anne Applebaum notes in her epic Gulag: A History, the “point” of arrest was to feed the frenzied demand for confessions. Stalin would frequently issue arrest quotas,1 leaving officials with the role of gathering innocents to fulfill government demands.

Prisoners could be held for days, months, or years, undergoing multiple interrogations and torturous prison conditions.

This was not even technically the Gulag. It was merely a holding point until prisoners could be transported to the camps. Prison was their first psychological test.

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Arrest & Arrival

Prison afforded government officials time to compile “evidence” for crimes. They promised, “Just give us a person — and we’ll create the case!”

Oftentimes, prisoners were unaware that the so-called crimes they committed were actual crimes. Most of the convictions were for everyday violations of the Soviet social order. Law codes were unavailable for dissection by the public. Solzhenitsyn fumes,

“Nowhere – neither in the ‘cultural education’ sections of the camps, nor in district libraries, not even in medium-sized cities, have I seen with my own eyes, held in my own hands, been able to buy, obtain, or even ask for the Code of Soviet law!”

Only 35 years after the codes were created (and on the verge of being replaced by new ones) was Solzhenitsyn able to read them.

These were charges that neither prisoner nor guard fully understood. But confessions had to be signed. Since many were unwilling to admit to crimes they knew were false — and would result in sentencing to Gulag camps — there was a necessity for torture:

“The more fantastic the charges were, the more ferocious the interrogation had to be in order to force the required confession. Given the fact that the cases were always fabricated, violence and torture had to accompany them.” (Solzhenitsyn)

Thus began the inner conflict that would haunt prisoners throughout their years in the Gulag — “the conflict between the soul and the bars.”

Interrogation

“As long ago as 1919 the chief method used by the interrogator was a revolver on the desk.” (Solzhenitsyn)

New prisoners were kept in small cells — often so narrow that they had no choice but to stand. Some were covered with bugs, without windows, without beds, and without ventilation. Others had their window glass smeared with red paint and equipped with a 15-watt light bulb that burned all day and night.

It could take very little to break a prisoner. After the fear and humiliation of arrest, mere solitude could provoke many into a confession.

“No one had addressed a human word to you. No one had looked at you with a human gaze. All they did was to peck at your brain and heart with iron beaks, and when you cried out or groaned, they laughed.” (Solzhenitsyn)

However, prison officials also had creative ways to interrogate those who remained difficult. Solzhenitsyn includes a whole list: darkness, foul language, psychological manipulation, humiliation, confusion, intimidation, lying, playing on one’s affections, sound effects, standing on one’s knees, sleep deprivation, water deprivation, bug-infested box, starvation, cold, and strait jackets.

Not to mention the beatings. Many of which employed medieval-like torture methods. There were also threats against one’s family.

What do you do, Solzhenitsyn asks,

“How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, when people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared?”

Despite the incredible odds, there were prisoners — very few — who managed to resist interrogation methods. But this required a unique inner strength. “Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory,” Solzhenitsyn explains.

Some prisoners would learn this strength during their time in the Gulag. Applebaum notes that unique aspects of the prison regime, such as interrogation, seemed “deliberately designed” to prepare inmates for camp life.

But the majority of prisoners trembled and signed the confession.

“Brother mine! Do not condemn those who, finding themselves in such a situation, turned out to be weak and confessed to more than they should have … Do not be the first to cast a stone at them.” (Solzhenitsyn)

Life in the Cells

Prison conditions varied immensely. Typically, rural prisons were dirtier but more lenient. Moscow prisons were cleaner but more deadly.

Solitary confinement marked much of the early years of Soviet prisons, but as arrests reached their peak in the 1930s and 40s, overcrowding took over. The main Arkhangelsk prison, for example, had a maximum capacity of 740 and held in 1941 between 1,661 and 2,380 prisoners.2 Such overcrowding, Solzhenitsyn writes, caused “the prisoners to torture the prisoners.”

When Lavrenty Beria took over Gulag operations in 1942, he aimed to make the camps into efficient economic tools. As a result, new rules were imposed in prisons to ensure healthy inmates who were able to work upon arrival in the camps.

Despite this, everything seemed calculated to make one go insane.

Prisoners were allowed outside for 20 minutes a day. There was constant surveillance, removing any sense of privacy. Forced sleeplessness was widely implemented to intimidate and interrogate prisoners; they were forbidden to sleep during the day and electric lights were kept on all night. A slop bucket, parasha, occupied the cell, used by all prisoners to relieve themselves — new inmates were forced to sleep next to it. There was also the risk of informers. Most prisoners expected, and acted as if, there was one informer in each cell.

Officials tried to prevent communication between prisoners in separate cells. In 1935, a new NKVD order forbade prisoners to talk, shout, sing, or write.

To combat this, prisoners used a kind of morse code, developed during the days of tsarist prisons. In one moving example, a man who learned the code and discovered that the man occupying the cell next to him was asking him “Who are you?” — he felt “a rush of pure love for a man who has been asking me for three months who I am.”3

Prisoners resorted to creative methods to maintain their sanity. One inmate kept in solitary confinement for 16 months devoted his time to washing his clothes, the floor, and the walls, while singing all the songs he could remember. Another, Alexander Dolgun, determined “not [to] allow them to drive him to madness or despair,” took measurements of his cell and “walked” to Moscow, across Europe, and home to the U.S.

Such stories seem to confirm Viktor Frankl’s observations from Holocaust camps — prisoners survived when they had a rich inner life they could retreat into. Solzhenitsyn provides one extraordinary example of this in Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev:

“[He] saved himself only by thinking of the eternal and infinite: of the order of the Universe – and of its Supreme Spirit; of the stars; of their internal state; and what Time and the passing of Time really are. And in this way he began to discover a new field in physics. And only in this way did he succeed in surviving in the Dmitrovsk Prison.”

Despite the lack of privacy and sanitation that came with overcrowding, many prisoners were grateful to be moved into cells and housed with others. Solzhenitsyn describes the moment of arrival into one’s first communal cell as “a very special one,” comparable to the emotion of your first love.

Now, he explains, you are no longer alone:

“‘We’ – Yes, that word which you may have despised out in freedom, when they used it as a substitute for your own individuality … is now revealed to you as something sweet: you are not alone in the world!”

The Line Between Good and Evil

Something must be said of those who watched over the prisoners.

Solzhenitsyn points out that the government went through pains to ensure that there was never any written authorization of torture by Stalin — that is,“his hands were clean.”

For better or worse, prison guards had a large degree of control over the wellbeing of the inmates. For much of the early years, torture, though never formally authorized, was widely used and supported. Whether a prisoner was treated well or poorly depended on the discretion of the officer “investigating” their case.

These “bluecaps,” as Solzhenitsyn called them, were given immense privileges:

“To know what it meant to be a bluecap one had to experience it! Anything you saw was yours! Any apartment you looked at was yours! Any woman was yours! Any enemy was struck from your path! The earth beneath your feet was yours! The heaven above you was yours – it was, after all, like your cap, sky blue!”

If only you turned away, blinded yourself to the horrors around you, life could be made much better.

Although it would be easy to dismiss these men as monsters, Solzhenitsyn warns us not to be too harsh. Applebaum notes of some instances — not many — of guards showing kindness to prisoners. Moreover, in such difficult circumstances as that of life in the Soviet Union, who among us might not be tempted to join the bluecaps? “It is a dreadful question,” Solzhenitsyn writes, “if one really answers it honestly.”

It is during his description of prison that Solzhenitsyn writes arguably the most iconic line of The Gulag Archipelago.

As he reflects on the prison guards, those government officials tasked with conducting interrogation and producing false confessions, he concludes,

“But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

As we move further into the Gulag, it is important to maintain a sense of grayness about those involved. Prisoners, guards, officials — they all had the capacity for both profound compassion and cruelty.

And when you’re thrust into the terrors of something like the Gulag, the line dividing the two becomes thinner and thinner.

*

An official enters your cell. He calls out a letter of the alphabet — never your name, only the first letter.

You rise up with a few fellow inmates and are informed of an upcoming transport.

“Well, brothers, a prisoner transport! A prisoner transport! We’re off to somewhere! Good Lord, bless us! Shall we gather up our bones?”

It’s nearing time to enter the Gulag. But first, you have to survive the journey.

This essay is part of a series on life in the Gulag. To read the next installment, Transport, subscribe to my substack!

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Bibliography

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Each month, I document how my reading and research merged and branched out.

Below you will find all the things I engaged with over the month of March. It includes book reviews, books added to my relentless TBR, random history bits, videos and writing projects. Also scattered about is the artwork that inspired me.

Down the rabbit hole we go!

Subscribe now

Read

The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars by Daniel Beer

With this book, I felt my love for history reignited. It’s always there, but sometimes it’s quieter. I devoured this book, slowly. I looked up every literary and artistic reference. If you’re interested in any of this, I’ve written many notes documenting my reading on my substack.

I picked up this book because I have been researching and writing about the Soviet Gulag for two years. One of the worst aspects of the Gulag — penal labor in Siberia — was not a new invention. It was practiced by the tsars for centuries, merely extended and made deadlier under the Soviets.

The House of the Dead was a compelling narrative, one that highlighted why I am so enthusiastic about Russian history: in it are the heights of the human experience, both the greatest love and the greatest suffering.

The most touching example of this was the willing exile of the wives of the Decembrists. It was so inspirational that I wrote an essay on it:

I am also working on a reading guide to Dostoevsky — specifically how his time in Siberian exile influenced his writing and philosophy, which will include a more detailed analysis of this book.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

I am trying to reread more books this year. I’ve always been resistant to rereading (unfortunately), but my reread of Shiver confirmed that it is a worthwhile practice.

I first read Shiver after the throes of reading Twilight in middle school. I didn’t remember much about the book, but for years I felt that returning to it would recall some of my feelings from childhood.

I was right. It is hard to describe the absolute joy of reoccupying a space of time that was once so pleasant and now so unreachable. Moreover, it was fun to read a book without any of the distractions of analysis. I read the book for pure enjoyment, to recapture a feeling rather than an idea.

It was a great experience — who knows, maybe Twilight is next?

Emma by Jane Austen

I am certain I will be countered with my opinion, but I was underwhelmed with Emma. When I say that the plot bored me, I say this while aware that Austen’s plots are supposed to be quieter. However, it was too quiet for me.

Supposedly, there was a mystery to the story — a mystery that I quickly guessed and never really felt that mysterious. It was nothing very dramatic or surprising, and even the big reveal at the end felt underwhelming.

Supposedly, Emma is a charismatic character. I was drawn to Emma in the beginning of the narrative — particularly with her infuriating intrusion into Harriet’s love life — but I quickly felt that the novel lost sight of its main character, and her personality faded into a seemingly more mundane temperament.

In fact, most of the characters fell flat for me. I laughed quite often at Mr. Woodhouse, but I never felt a strong connection to Mr. Knightley. In fact, the romance between the two characters felt forced — too analytical, like Emma just threw up her hands and said “I guess it makes sense to marry him.”

However, despite my disappointment, I am determined to find new ways to appreciate Emma, so consider this a call to any Janeites to help rehabilitate Emma for me!

A History of the American People by Paul Johnson

It took me 8 months to finish this book. Clocking in at almost a thousand pages, Johnson’s History of the American People is an unbelievable achievement.

I read the book very slowly; I used it as teaching material for a class I was developing on American history. PSA for any educators: use it as a textbook. It is infinitely more interesting than any standard American history textbook, but it provides all the essential information and engages with all the complexities and contradictions of American history.

Its merits are endless: compelling writing style, cohesive and logical storytelling, ability to fairly engage with competing interpretations, insightful connections and thematic lessons, and appreciation for nuance.

This has secured the spot of my favorite comprehensive book on American history.

Reading

As I mentioned, I’m working on a reading guide to Dostoevsky, so I am reading his Notes from a Dead House, an autobiographical account of his years in Siberia. Dostoevsky entered the Siberian penal system in 1850, and his time here influenced everything he wrote.

It never feels like spring until I begin my annual reread of The Wind in the Willows. I am enjoying the flowers and sunshine with Mole and Mr. Toad.

Finally, I’m starting an exploration of William Blake this April. There are two strands of reading/research I want to focus on this year, one being a more comprehensive understanding of Russian history and the other being religion. Part of my personal curriculum for the religious component is engaging with writers who tapped into some form of personal spiritual experience, i.e. William Blake.

If anyone has any guidance as I begin, it would be greatly appreciated!

Books added to my TBR

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Rabbit holes

Here are a few bits and bobs that I thought about this month:

1. Learning about plants in my home state.

2. Quanah Parker’s Star House, which is unfortunately falling to pieces. I first learned about this in Empire of the Summer Moon and the author’s talk with Joe Rogan.

   

3. Barbara von Krüdener, a German mystic who had influence over Tsar Alexander I — I couldn’t help but draw parallels to Rasputin.

4. The importance of quiet spaces.

5. The Icebergs by Frederic Edwin Church was originally titled The North, in quiet support of the Union during the Civil War. To attract a wider audience abroad, he renamed it to The Icebergs. It went missing for almost a century, reemerging in 1979.

   

6. Sakhalin. One of the worst sites of Siberian exile. Unable to travel there myself, I watched Youtube videos about the history and landscape of the island. Shockingly, there was no mention of its dark past. Chekhov visited the island while dying from tuberculosis to record and expose the horrid conditions — he wrote a book on it.

7. This stunning first-hand description of a Siberian night.

8. Fascinated by studies about bears having an aesthetic sensibility. Some researchers have noted that bears can often be found sitting in solitude and staring at lakes, suggesting an appreciation for the landscape.

9. Videos I watched and want to dissect more:

   

Things I wrote about

In March, I published an essay on the wives of the Decembrists, 19th-century political exiles to Siberia. I was determined to write something about them because their story was one of the most inspirational I have come across in history:

As always, I am curious about your engagements over the past month — what sorts of things inspired you? Here’s to another month of learning!

“Now, with God’s help, I shall become myself.” — Søren Kierkegaard

“Their epaulettes were torn from their shoulders and thrown, together with their military greatcoats, into the flames. Each officer was made to kneel, and an executioner took a sword, specially filed down at the middle of its blade, and broke it over his head. The prisoners were then dressed in the rough grey smock issued to convicts and pronounced ‘civilly dead.’”1

On December 14th, 1825, a group of political dissidents gathered on Senate Square in St. Petersburg to prevent the new tsar, Nicholas I, from being sworn into office after the death of Alexander I. The Decembrists, as they became known, were convicted of attempting to overthrow Nicholas I in a violent, failed coup.

At 3 a.m. on July 13, 1826, the Decembrists were led into the courtyard of the Peter and Paul Fortress — a symbol of Russian autocracy — and declared “civilly dead.” They underwent a typical ceremony (described above), and afterwards were sentenced to what many deemed the worst fate imaginable: 20 years penal labor and permanent exile in Eastern Siberia.

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The Realities of Siberian Exile

“I no longer considered myself an inhabitant of this world.”2

Such was the feeling among the 121 Decembrists sent into exile.

In his profound study on Siberian Exile Under the Tsars, historian Daniel Beer explains that this sentencing was the equivalent of “absolute annihilation.” Many of the members of the Decembrists came from the most eminent families of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Such a fate would have been to enter another world.

Siberian exile was a typical form of punishment under the tsars. It was a swift way to remove criminals from Russian society while colonizing remote outposts of the empire. Years later, centuries of Siberian exile would serve as inspiration for the creation of the Soviet Gulag system.

At the time, Siberia had the same connotation as hell (in fact, many commentators made the apt comparison to Dante’s Inferno). One Russian explorer described,

“The very name Siberia is enough to terrify a Russian, who sees in it only inexorable separation from his homeland, a vast dungeon, inescapable and eternal.”

Exile to Siberia meant a plethora of trials: harsh penal labor in temperatures below -20 degrees Celsius, a dearth of food, clothing, housing, and medical care, humiliation rituals enacted both by guards and fellow prisoners, near extinction of all familial correspondence, and, perhaps most fatally, the destruction of the self.

Many family members of the Decembrists appealed to the Tsar for mercy. This was a long-held tradition in Russia — known as the “tsar-father” myth — in which the tsar acted as a “kind of Russian Christ”3 who hears the pleas of his people and grants clemency.

Nicholas, however, was in no forgiving mood; the pleas of the Decembrists’ families fell on deaf ears.

The Wives

It was under these conditions that a number of the wives of the Decembrists made the courageous and controversial decision to follow their husbands into exile.

The most famous were Maria Volkonskaya, Aleksandra Muravyova, and Yekaterina Trubetskaya. Inspired by the Byronic Romanticism of the 19th century, Maria declared in a letter to her husband, Sergei:

“I can assure you of one thing: whatever your fate, I will share it.”

Most of the wives had no idea that their husbands were involved in schemes against the state. However, as part of aristocratic families, their decision to follow their husbands was not easy to ignore.

The wives’ determination caused a number of problems for the state. Namely, Russian society was built in part on the belief in the sanctity of marriage. Thus, a denial of the wives’ right and duty to share their husbands’ fate would have been to deny the sanctity of marriage.

Moreover, it created an uncomfortable battle with the autocracy, drawing unwanted attention to the Decembrists and their cause. In an attempt to provoke the women into staying behind, the Tsar denied their right to take their children with them.

The wives were thus forced into a cruel choice between their husbands and their children. Many chose to leave their children safely behind with their families; some of the wives would hear of their death months later, miles away in Siberia.

The families of the women were distraught by their decision to leave. Maria’s mother wrote to Sergei:

“She will share the fate of a disgraced convict – she will die. Don’t be her assassin!”

Ultimately, despite the wrath of their families and the difficulties posed by the state, the women made the courageous decision to follow their husbands into exile in Siberia. Maria describes the moment she told her family. Her father was unable to look at her. She wrote,

“It’s over. I will never see him again, I have died for my family.”

The Journey into Exile

When it came time for the Decembrists to journey into exile, the Tsar commanded their transport be conducted with the utmost secrecy, in order to prevent any popular discontent. Chains were clapped around their hands and feet as they were ushered into carriages to take them from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk.

As the Decembrists reached the Ural Mountains, one can imagine their reactions as similar to many prisoners who reached the boundary post, marking the point between Europe and Asia. American traveler George Kennan wrote of the boundary post in 1888:

“No other spot between St. Petersburg and the Pacific is more full of painful suggestions, and none has for the traveller a more melancholy interest than the little opening in the forest where stands this grief-consecrated pillar.”

As the women prepared to follow their husbands into Siberia, they were issued a warning by Nicholas:

“I feel obliged once again to repeat here my warning, which I have already given you, about what awaits you, should you travel beyond Irkutsk.”

Essentially, the Tsar was denying the women the right to return to Russia once they had reached Siberia. Although they had not committed any crimes, the wives were destined to share the same fate as those punished by exile.

After all the obstacles thrown in their way, both by their families and the state, it is a miracle that the wives still decided to journey to Siberia.

Exile

Upon their arrival in Siberia, the women encountered more challenges. First, they were informed that they would only be allowed to speak with their husbands in Russian (French was the preferred language among the aristocracy; many had shaky Russian) and only in the presence of an officer. Moreover, they were not permitted to live with their husbands, who were confined to the prisons.

Maria and Yekaterina rented a small cabin together in a mining settlement. Maria described it as so narrow that “when I lay down on my mattress on the floor my head touched the wall and my feet were squashed against the door.”

Officials were aware that the arrival of the wives put them in a precarious condition. As Beer describes, “Officials could not restrict the men’s access to their wives without at the same time publicly punishing selfless and devoted women who had already suffered a great deal.” It was a balancing act between their loyalty to the state and respect and admiration for the wives.

A result of this dilemma was that the women had a privileged position of negotiation. One Decembrist recalled the women entering into verbal combat with officers:

“They would say to his face the harshest and most acerbic words, calling him a jailer and adding that no decent man would have assumed his position unless it was, whatever the consequences and the tsar’s fury, to alleviate our lot.”

In August of 1830, in the midst of their adjustment to Siberia, the Decembrists were yanked away from Chita, their prison home for the past 2 years, and ordered to prison in Petrovsk Zavod. It was a 670-kilometer journey.

The women learned of the impending move in June of 1830. At the time, all of them were nursing infants, an added burden to the trek. Moreover, they were told that they would be forced to choose between living with their husbands in the prison — essentially making them prisoners too — or living outside the prison and visiting their husbands only twice a week.

Yekaterina wrote to the head of the Third Department (Nicholas’ secret police force) begging an intervention with the Tsar:

“General, I have given up everything so as to only not be parted from my husband. I live only for him. For God’s sake, do not take away the possibility of being with him.”

Nicholas denied the request.

Arriving in Petrovsk Zavod, the women rented cabins on the outskirts of the prison. In order to visit their husbands, they were forced to walk between their homes and the prison in temperatures below -20 degrees Celsius. They had to leave their children at home, once again forced to choose between husband and child.

Aleksandra wrote to her father of the agony of such decisions:

“My heart bleeds for my child, who is left alone at home. On the other hand, I’m terribly worried about Nikita … It has already been two days since I have seen him, because I am seriously ill and cannot leave home.”

This letter was, in fact, confiscated, as it suggested poor living conditions that could stir unrest back home. Such “reckless love,” as one official called it, need not inspire others to similar misfortunes.

Their worries reached a critical point when Aleksandra died in September, 1832. Frantic officials worried that the news would provoke public uproar, and as a result, issued a new allowance for husbands to visit their wives outside of the prison.

Finding Freedom in Siberia

The wives’ support extended beyond the prison walls. They formed what one commentator called “a link between the living and the politically dead.” Each woman acted as a scribe and postman for a number of men in the prison, writing letters to families and friends in Russia.

The wives, unlike the prisoners, were able to send relatively free correspondence. By doing this, they could circulate news of the Decembrists to influential circles in Russia. As a result, Beer notes,

“The tsar found himself very publicly playing the part of a petty and vindictive tyrant, gratuitously separating children from their parents and inflicting suffering on women who were not only innocent but also embodied the very highest virtues of spousal devotion and self-sacrifice.”

The women also became active members of their Siberian communities, fostering learning and charity among the poor. The Decembrist community as a whole spread knowledge throughout Siberia, attempting to bypass the time by engaging in studies of geography, anatomy, literature, and languages.

Eventually, a few of the wealthier Decembrists were able to build homes after being released from penal labor to settlement status in 1835. However, most of the families continued to struggle in Siberia, unable to earn a living and forced to farm a landscape that was both unfamiliar and hostile.

Remembrance

Their struggles made the Decembrists immortal. In the words of one Decembrist, they became “political martyrs for our ideas.” In the decades to follow, the Decembrists would serve as inspiration for many liberal and radical elements of Russian society who saw in their actions an answer to autocratic tyranny.

However, it was the women who captured the imagination of the Russian people. They lost as much, if not more, as their revolutionary husbands. While they did not participate in any crimes against the state, they accepted their treatment as criminals, despite their innocence, for the sake of love and devotion.

Their actions inspired writers and thinkers throughout the 19th century. Poet Pyotr Vyazemsky declared,

“We must thank these women! They have added a few beautiful lines of verse to our history.”

Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem “Russian Women” was inspired by them, along with Dostoevsky’s ending of Crime and Punishment.

Dostoevsky’s entire philosophy, in fact, was formed by his time in Siberia. His first clear formulation of his new faith can be found in a letter written to one of the Decembrist wives, Natalia Fonvizina, in 1854. He was profoundly impacted by what he saw as “the voluntary nature of their suffering.”4

*

In January, 1850, Dostoevsky reached Tobolsk on his way to exile in Siberia. While waiting, he was unexpectedly welcomed by three of the Decembrists’ wives. It was a profound experience.

He described these “great martyresses” who sacrificed everything, “their social position, wealth, connections, relatives, and sacrificed it all for the supreme moral duty, the freest duty that can ever exist.”

For the next four years of his exile, Dostoevsky slept with a copy of the Gospels, gifted to him by the Decembrist wives, under his pillow.

Theirs is a story of endurance, integrity, and sacrifice. It inspired generations of thinkers, writers, reformers and revolutionaries in Russia.

“I have forgotten my native city,

Wealth, honors and family name

To share with him Siberia’s cold

And endure the inconstancy of fate.”5

This essay was inspired by my reading of The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars.

Welcome to the first month of this new series of Reading and Rabbit Holes. At the end of each month, I’m always fascinated to see how my reading and research both merged and branched out, so I wanted to dedicate a space to documenting it.

One of my favorite parts of my job is that I have the freedom to explore anything that piques my interest. With that in mind, this year I’ve decided to plan my reading less in order to leave more space for unplanned directions.

Below are all the things I engaged with over the month of February. It includes book reviews, books added to my relentless TBR, random history bits, videos and writing projects. I also scattered artwork that inspired me.

Much of this is brief commentary with the hope that you will comment below with your thoughts, explanations, or elaborations on any of the topics that were important to me this past month. Hopefully I will find more to explore.

Down the rabbit hole we go!

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Read

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

“‘Course the Indians have had this land forever. To them it’s precious because it’s old. To us it’s exciting because it’s new.”

It felt strange to read Lonesome Dove in the winter months, but a snowstorm forced me inside for days, and it felt like the perfect atmosphere to become lost in the epic.

It is a novel obsessed with the past. I realized that it is a great accomplishment to live to be old without harboring disillusions of reliving the past. The more I read, the more I understand what a big ask this is.

There was a heaviness pervading the book that has not left me since reading. Lonesome Dove presents life in achingly realistic terms. There was very little glory, very little joy in the novel; it is honest about the pain of living, doubly felt in the harsh landscape of the American West.

However, there was something about the novel that still eluded me. It felt natural to compare it to East of Eden, and it seemed to keep falling short of that most wonderful book. I leave the world of Lonesome Dove feeling stuck in the complicated mire of human emotion, yet I do not feel a strong kinship with any of the characters. I spent the most emotional work with Augustus — I went back and forth on whether I liked his life philosophy, and therefore him — and I still feel unfinished with him. Despite this, I didn’t experience the soaring and sublime emotions stoked in East of Eden, a standard admittedly difficult to achieve.

One positive development of my read is that it encouraged a new interest in the history of the American West. This is not an area of American history that I have devoted much time to, and this otherworldly place requires a new vitality and appreciation in my studies.

Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne

“No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.”

This was a feat — Gwynne accomplished something with this book that very few historians have been able to do. It is amazing to witness the scope of Gwynne’s research. Tackling a people that lacked a writing system and complex cultural practices, his book is meticulously researched and is as riveting as a novel.

The most important part of this work, I believe, is his honesty in portraying Native-white relations. There is no deflection. He presents Comanche warrior culture for what it was, deadly and cruel, rather than some idealized version. At the same time, he draws attention to unfair government practices and criticizes unjust raids by Rangers.

I cannot recommend this book enough; it seems to be an essential work for understanding American history and development.

In addition to reading the book, I also reread Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 thesis on “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and watched an incredible video of Lars Anderson recreating Comanche archery practices. I also hope to watch “The Searchers,” a John Wayne Western loosely based on the capture of and search for Cynthia Ann Parker.

Reading

I started reading Daniel Beer’s The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars. I picked this up as helpful reading for my research into the Russian Gulag, as the Soviet penal system has its roots in the centuries-long practice of Siberian exile.

I am only a few chapters into the book, but I am tearing through it. I’m certain I will devote multiple essays to its contents.

At the moment, I’ve been struck by Aleksander Sochaczewski’s painting Farewell to Europe! (1894). Russian prisoners marching to exile passed a boundary post (no longer standing) marking the point between “Europe” and “Asia.”

Prisoners would carve their names into the post, write farewell messages or gather soil to take with them into exile. American traveler George Kennan wrote of the boundary post in 1888:

“No other spot between St. Petersburg and the Pacific is more full of painful suggestions, and none has for the traveller a more melancholy interest than the little opening in the forest where stands this grief-consecrated pillar.”

Books added to my TBR

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Rabbit holes

Here are a few bits and bobs that I thought about this month:

1. Ancient Mesopotamian “Dialogue of Pessimism” — a cunning philosophical inquiry into action vs. inaction through a dialogue between a slave and master.

2. Hearst Castle — William Randolph Hearst (American newspaper publisher and politician) built this dramatic home in San Simeon. He hired Julia Morgan (who is herself quite interesting) as its architect.

   

3. Always thinking about the iconic Gospel of Thomas line: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

4. I found this hilarious book at a friend’s house. For any resentful ornithologists:

   

5. William James, “Talks to teachers on psychology” — Exploring for better classroom practices. I also aim to read The Varieties of Religious Experience this year.

6. Videos I watched and want to dissect more:

Things I wrote about

In February, I posted my Reading Guide on Gilgamesh. This project took me the better part of two months, and I hope it’s helpful to anyone studying the ancients!

“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.” — Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

At a glance …

Location: Ancient Mesopotamia (Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian cultures)

Author: unknown, oral narrative

Year of Composition: c. 2,100 B.C.

Original Language: Cuneiform (representative of a variety of languages), specifically Akkadian and Sumerian

Structure: Epic; divided into 12 tablets

Themes: quest for self-knowledge; civilization vs. savagery; human connection

Cultural Context: Gilgamesh originated in ancient Iraq, a region made up of multiple cultures. There are different versions of the epic, but the best preserved is the Standard Babylonian version. The story was recorded on cuneiform tablets, clay tablets that have allowed for the epic’s preservation. Although we have much of the story of Gilgamesh, significant parts of the tablets are missing, often indicated by translators with holes [ ]. In 2003, one scholar determined that we have about two-thirds of the poem. New sections have been discovered since then and continue to be unearthed.

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Tablet I.

“There was a man

who saw the deep, the bedrock of the land,

who knew the ways and learned all things:

Gilgamesh saw the deep, the bedrock of the land,

he knew the ways and learned all things.”

Reader, meet Gilgamesh. He has “set down all his trials on a slab of stone” for you — this is that very story you are reading. Like all ancient cultures, storytelling was an essential part of the fabric of ancient Mesopotamia. Many of the oldest works were said to come from sages who were sent to Earth before the Flood by the god of wisdom, Ea.

Upon beginning the epic, the reader is given a list of commands: “see that wall,” “behold the bulwark,” and “climb the wall of Uruk.” You are now participating in the epic.

Despite being two-thirds divine, Gilgamesh understands humanity. He sees “the deep,” he understands the world and he “grasp[s] all wisdom.” By reading his story, we too have the opportunity to gain his wisdom.

Gilgamesh is guided by his human impulses; his actions are in quest of answers to humanity, not divinity. His godliness is mostly personified by his bodily perfection:

“His locks curled thick like ears of corn,

his teeth glistened like the rising sun,

his hair glowed dark like lapis lazuli.”

Gilgamesh terrorizes his city, oppressing the citizens — and specifically new brides — of Uruk. In this way, Gilgamesh can be read as a commentary on kingship, much like the stories of the Hebrew Bible. His actions are an insult to proper rule. The breakdown of kingship usually corresponded with a societal breakdown; therefore, Gilgamesh must be reformed so that Uruk itself can endure.

Enter Enkidu. Much like Adam is given Eve, Enkidu is created as a “counterpart” to tame Gilgamesh. Described as “a son of silence, woven for war,” Enkidu is born into the wild, “naked like an animal.” He is the alternative to civilization.

The city occupies an important role in the epic and reflects the development of urban spaces in ancient Mesopotamia. After the twenty-third century B.C., history would alternate between united cities and fractured, local self government. Uruk itself was a major city center that was part of the Uruk Phenomenon, a term archeologists use to characterize the rapid process of cultural expansion throughout southern Mesopotamia.

But before he can enter the city, Enkidu must first be tamed. This is done through a priestess of Ishtar* who seduces Enkidu for six days and seven nights. His innocence is removed. He must become human, but he can only do this through losing his purity.

With this change, Enkidu is now ready to take on Gilgamesh, who has already been dreaming of Enkidu. In his dreams, Gilgamesh sees a meteorite fall to the earth:

“I wrapped my arms around it

and loved it like a wife,

then I picked it up and set it at your feet.

And you declared it my equal!”

Gilgamesh anxiously awaits the arrival of Enkidu, as he is thrilled at finally having “a friend and advisor all mine.” The want of connection between individuals remains an important theme throughout the first half of the epic.

*More on Ishtar in Tablet VI

Tablet II.

“Enkidu was sitting at the priestess’ feet,

and the two began to make love again.”

Enkidu is now initiated into the ways of man. He is taught how to eat bread and drink beer. His fur is shaved and he is smeared with oil.

Enkidu is informed that Gilgamesh will be attending another wedding to seize the bride, and “when Enkidu heard this, his face went white.” Despite needing to be taught the ways of man, Enkidu does not need to be taught a moral code. He knows that Gilgamesh is subverting kingship.

Enkidu arrives at the wedding and blocks Gilgamesh’s path to the house. The two men fight, “butting like bulls,” and finish as equals. Gilgamesh realizes that this is the friend he was promised and embraces Enkidu.

Gilgamesh’s mother, however, rejects Enkidu: “he was born in the wild, he has no family.” Enkidu is devastated:

“Tears filled his eyes,

his arms lost strength,

his power disappeared.”

It is a crushing scene. Relationships are essential to the characters’ identities. If Enkidu was born without this, then who is he?

Gilgamesh declares that they will journey to the Cedar Forest and kill the savage Humbaba. By doing so, Enkidu will be remembered by many, even if he is without a family. Enkidu knows Humbaba from his time in the forest, so killing him is a terrifying prospect: “In the home of Humbaba, all hope is lost.”

But Gilgamesh “worked his words” — one of my favorite translations — to Enkidu in a brilliant speech, reminiscent of the iconic line from Gospel of Thomas:

“But the days of men are numbered,

all that we do is nothing but wind.

And there you are — afraid of death!

What then is the use of your valiant might?”

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” (Gospel of Thomas)

Similar to Achilles’s desire for immortality through glory, Gilgamesh is determined to make “an everlasting” name for himself. However, as we will see, Gilgamesh is not satisfied with this kind of immortality.

For now, he is young and reckless. Both Enkidu and the councilors of Uruk know this and caution him,

“You are young, Gilgamesh. Your heart carries you away,

you do not understand the things you say.”

Ignoring the warning, Gilgamesh plunges into battle.

Tablet III.

“Come back unharmed to Uruk’s dock.

Gilgamesh, do not rely on your strong arms alone:

let your eyes take aim and your sword strike home!”

Tablet III reads almost as a prolonged incantation. Readers will find that many parts of the epic are repetitive, due to its origins in oral storytelling. This works especially well in this tablet, which includes a ritual prayer for Gilgamesh’s safe return.

Before heading to the Cedar forest, Gilgamesh asks for blessings from his mother, Ninsun. She performs rituals to ensure his safety, but she also laments, “Why, Shamash, did you burden my son with so restless a heart?”

Restlessness is a defining quality of Gilgamesh; the entire story is determined by his inner restlessness. Gilgamesh lacks inner peace, which is externalized in his journey.

Enkidu’s restlessness, however, is solved when Ninsun negates her earlier rejection and adopts him into her family:

“Strong Enkidu, you were not born from my womb.

But now your family will be Gilgamesh’s temple:

…

I hereby take Enkidu as my beloved son,

let Gilgamesh treat him with brotherly love.”

Sharing in the danger ahead, Enkidu now becomes equals with Gilgamesh. He is instructed to lead them into the Cedar Forest and safely return Gilgamesh to the city.

Tablet IV.

“They stopped to eat after a hundred miles,

they pitched camp after two hundred miles more.”

As they travel, Gilgamesh rests and dreams. Enkidu builds him a house for the dream god, and Gilgamesh sleeps in a circle of sacred flour. This is a ritual that would have been often performed in the countryside to ward off ghosts and demons.

Suddenly, Gilgamesh awakes, disoriented, much like our feeling after waking from a nightmare:

“My friend, did you call me? Why am I awake?

Did you touch me? Why am I anxious?

Did a god walk by?

Why are my limbs numb?”

Enkidu is entrusted with the Freudian task of interpreting Gilgamesh’s dreams. Every interpretation he provides to Gilgamesh is positive, despite the dreams being nightmarish.

In ancient Mesopotamia, a culture that placed great value on dreams, repetitive interpretations were often done to assure the dreamer. In the Atrahasis flood epic,* we are told that gods and humans once communicated directly; however, after the gods agree to a permanent silence, they rely on Ea, god of wisdom, to speak to humans through dreams.

*More on Atrahasis in Tablet XI

Tablet V.

“There they stood, staring at the forest.

They saw how tall the cedars were,

they saw a way into the woods.”

The battle begins. Everything about the Cedar Forest is terrifying — the cries of the animals, the shadows of the trees. Gilgamesh takes the lead, despite his own fear. Much like the appeal to the Muses in the opening lines of The Iliad, Gilgamesh announces:

“Now rage! Let your mind run wild like a prophet,

let your cry ring loud like the drum of a temple.

Let despair leave your legs and stiffness your arms!

My friend, take hold of me. We will go as one.

Let your heart speak war!

Forget death, chase life.”

Humbaba taunts Gilgamesh and insults Enkidu:

“Fish that never knew its father,

turtle spawn that never drank its mother’s milk!”

The battle is the culmination of their friendship. When one falters the other steps up.

Humbaba nears defeat, and as Gilgamesh prepares to strike a deadly blow, Humbaba pleads for his life. This complicates things — what was initially a heroic depiction of good versus evil now turns to a pitiful scene in which the reader doubts the evil.

The power shifts from Gilgamesh to Enkidu as Humbaba pleads with Enkidu to speak to Gilgamesh and spare him. Now, Enkidu must choose between his two allegiances: his past life, tethered to the forest of which Humbaba is part, and his new life as a man, brother of Gilgamesh. Humbaba appeals to their shared upbringing and criticizes Enkidu’s rejection of his former life, describing him at Gilgamesh’s feet “like a hireling.”

But Enkidu rejects any semblance of mercy: “Kill Humbaba … My friend, why have mercy on him?” Instead, it is Gilgamesh who seems to hesitate, while Enkidu encourages him to smite the last connection to Enkidu’s past.

However, Humbaba does not let this rejection go without punishment. He curses Gilgamesh and Enkidu:

“May they not grow old together!

May Enkidu have no one but Gilgamesh to bury him.”

Humbaba’s curse targets their weakness: kinship. Both men carve a significant part of their identity out of their relationship. Moreover, proper burial was essential in ancient cultures. In The Iliad and The Aeneid, for example, there are drastic consequences for failing to give fallen men a proper burial.

However, the destruction does not end with the death of Humbaba. Rather, the two tear the forest “into a wasteland.” Some scholars have focused on this scene to illustrate the horrors of environmental destruction. It is clear that their actions were not sanctioned by the gods; killing Humbaba, protector of the Cedar Forest, is sacrilege.

Tablet VI.

“He washed his filthy hair, cleaned his dirty gear

and shook his hair down over his shoulders.

He took off his tatters and put on clean clothes,

wrapped in a cloak and tied it with a belt.

Then Gilgamesh put on his crown,

and Ishtar caught sight of his beauty.”

The feats of Gilgamesh attract the goddess Ishtar, a complicated goddess in the Mesopotamian pantheon. Goddess of fertility, destruction, and transformation, she is change itself. Translator Sophus Helle describes her as doing “nothing that ought to be done and everything that should not be.”

Ishtar offers to marry Gilgamesh, and he promptly delivers a poetic rejection:

“You are a winter too warm to freeze ice,

a half-door that blocks no wind or draft,

a palace that crumbles and kills its heroes …”

The metaphors continue for seven more lines. Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar due to her reputation of harming her lovers.

Like a spoiled child, Ishtar runs to her father and complains that Gilgamesh is insulting her, “spouting slander.” Her father, however, blames her, asking if she did not goad Gilgamesh into such words.

Ishtar does not hear reason; she demands the Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh. If she is not given it, she threatens to “raise the dead to eat the living,” a common threat in Mesopotamian literature. It is a terrifying reversal of the natural order.

Her father caves, but Gilgamesh and Enkidu swiftly kill the animal. They further insult Ishtar by throwing the Bull’s member at her. As goddess of fertility this would have been doubly insulting.

Another victory adds to Gilgamesh’s confidence. He feels almost invincible; his divinity is on full display. However, it is now, at his height of hubris, that he will be forced back into the pain of humanity.

Tablet VII.

“My brother, what a dream I had tonight!”

Enkidu dreams, and his dreams are ominous. He sees the gods in council, decreeing that because they killed the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba, one of them must die. The gods decide on Enkidu.

Enkidu cries, mourning that he will never see his brother again. Notice the emphasis on connection; it is not death that frightens Enkidu, but rather the severance of his relationship with Gilgamesh.

The underworld in ancient Mesopotamia is more similar to the Hebrew underworld of Sheol than the Christian heaven or hell. There is no judgement; rather the dead occupy a “house of darkness” where they will “eat dust and live on clay.” There is an irony here, since it was believed that humans were fashioned out of clay (and a god). Readers will receive a further depiction of the Mesopotamian underworld in the final tablet.

The roles now reverse: Gilgamesh consoles Enkidu and prays for him to be saved. Enkidu, however, realizes that he is doomed:

“No, my friend, my fate is carved:

some people die before their time.”

He flings curses at the gods and curses Shamhat, the priestess who tamed him (many of these curses are identical to ones written in The Descent of Ishtar). He reflects on the consequences of his seduction — “my untouched body you weakened in the wild!” — filled with regret.

Shamash, god of the sun and divine justice, hears his cries and chastises him: Why curse something from which you gained? Everything is a trade off. Although Enkidu was led to death, he was also brought to Gilgamesh, his “great friend.” His life has been by defined his lack of relationships; he has achieved this, so did he not lead a successful life?

Shamash promises Enkidu that he will be remembered. Gilgamesh will “make Uruk weep for you, wail for you.” In this way, Enkidu will achieve immortality.

Frustratingly, much of this tablet is missing. We are told that Enkidu languishes in bed for twelve days — and then it is blank.

Humbaba’s curse comes true when his death is confirmed in the next tablet.

Tablet VIII.

“At the first flood of daylight,

Gilgamesh wept for his friend.”

Enkidu dies; the funerary rites proceed. Nature itself weeps for him. Gilgamesh mourns much in the same way that Achilles mourned Patroclus. He pulls out clumps of his hair and tears at his clothes.

Gilgamesh demands a statue be made of his friend and commands his city to weep for him. In a strange reversal, he promises to become more like the wild Enkidu:

“I will wander unwashed

through the wild, wearing only the skin of a lion.”

Movement is once again away from the city out into the wild. The wilderness once served as an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Now, it serves a mourning place, reflecting the turmoil in Gilgamesh. Outside civilization, Gilgamesh is given the opportunity to find whatever it is he is looking for. But as he goes outward and into the wilderness — seemingly shedding his humanity — his ambitions become more divine. And the search begins for immortality.

Tablet IX.

“As he wandered through the wild,

Gilgamesh wept bitterly for his friend Enkidu:

‘I too will die. Am I not like Enkidu?

Grief has stepped into my heart.’”

This tablet is filled with wandering and worry. The more Gilgamesh travels into the wild, the more he starts to become like the untamed Enkidu.

Shamash starts to worry about him:

“Gilgamesh, where are you going?

You will not find the life you seek.”

But Gilgamesh is undeterred. It is his nature to be restless; besides, as he asks,

“will I lack rest in the underworld?

All those years of lying down!”

Gilgamesh fears rest; it suggests an unlived life. His restlessness is a manifestation of his anxiety towards life and death. In his quest he will search for tangible immortality, but, as Joseph Campbell assures us, the journey is never about the end goal. Rather, Gilgamesh embarks on his journey out of a fear of pain and death; he moves because he is afraid of what will happen when he stops moving.

The logistics of his journey begin like this: he travels to the mountains named Twin Peaks and reaches the gates guarded by scorpion people “whose eyes were death” —doubly frightening for Gilgamesh. They ask him where he is going and he informs them that he is on his way to meet Uta-napishti* to discover “the secret of life and death.”

By now, we should know that such monumental secrets are never revealed to humanity — Adam and Eve taught us the danger of seeking such knowledge.

But Gilgamesh is undeterred, traveling through a tunnel of darkness for 24 hours until he emerges into sunlight.

*More on Uta-napishti in Tablet XI

Tablet X.

“Shiduri was an innkeeper who lived by the seashore,

There she lived”

Gilgamesh bears the physical traces of his journey — “covered in pelts and spreading fear” — as the wilderness is starting to overcome him. Shiduri, understandably confused and worried, eyes him from a distance and retreats onto her roof to avoid direct confrontation with the strange man.

Gilgamesh looks up and introduces himself by listing his feats with Enkidu. Shiduri is disturbed — if he really accomplish all this, then,

“what hollowed your cheeks, bowed your head,

wrecked your heart, and broke your body?

Why is your mind full of grief?”

Gilgamesh narrates the traumatic death of Enkidu, revealing the particularly gross detail that he refrained from burying him until “a maggot fell from his nose.” He tells her that his grief is punctuated by his fear of death: “Am I not like him?”

He must be told the way to Uta-napishti. Shiduri advises him that crossing the Waters of Death to reach him is dangerous, but he hastily boards the boat of Ur-shanabi who — after Gilgamesh smashes the mysterious “Stone Ones” and causes general chaos for their trip — transports him to Uta-napishti.

Uta-napishti echoes Shiduri, asking, “Why is your mind full of grief?”, and Gilgamesh repeats his tale. He admits that his fear of death has prompted him to wander through the wild. He ends his story with a desperate command,

“Now let the door of grief be closed,

seal its gate with pitch and tar!”

This cry is very revealing. His journey is not really about immortality; rather, Gilgamesh is simply looking for a way to end his suffering. He’s restless because his grief can never leave him.

Uta-napishti knows this and asks him, “Why, Gilgamesh, do you always chase grief?” What follows is one of the most poetic and philosophical passages of the entire epic.

Uta-napishti chastises Gilgamesh for his ceaseless wandering; his restlessness has only “hastened the day of [his] death.” In a sublime rumination on humanity’s relationship with death, Uta-napishti ends the tablet with the declaration,

“Humans! Your lines snap like reeds.

…

“No one sees death.

No one sees the face of death,

no one hears the voice of death.

But it is savage death that snaps mankind.

“How similar are death and abduction,

…

The gods gave humans life and death,

but did not reveal which day you will die.”

Death is a human concern; the gods do not have sympathy for it. It is pointless to waste time over fear of death. Death, the great equalizer, is a certainty.

Tablet XI.

“Gilgamesh said to him, to the faraway Uta-napishti:

‘I look at you, Uta-napishti,

and your body is no different, you are just like me.’”

Gilgamesh is confused, and even disappointed. He sees that Uta-napishti is physically similar to him, and thus wonders why he was given immortality when Gilgamesh was not. One cannot help but think that Uta-napishti’s profound advice in the previous tablet was wasted on Gilgamesh.

Nevertheless, Uta-napishti reveals a secret to Gilgamesh — the ancient Mesopotamian Flood myth. The Sumerian King List documents the Flood as 25,000 years before Gilgamesh’s kingship. There exist other versions of this myth — most notably the Atrahasis story, our most complete and earliest version, in which the Flood comes to solve overpopulation — but Uta-napishti narrates the story from his perspective. Many details are similar to the biblical Noah story: instructed by the gods, he builds a ship with specific dimensions, brings on board his family, creatures and “the seed of life.” On the seventh day, he sends out birds to test for land, and when he reaches it offers a sacrifice to the gods.

Here’s where things differ: the gods decide to honor Uta-napishti and his wife with immortality. Uta-napishti literally means “He Found Life.”

After finishing his tale, Uta-napishti instructs Gilgamesh to stay awake for seven nights in order to find immortality. However,

“… as soon as Gilgamesh squatted down,

sleep blew over him like a fog.”

Sleep is often associated with death. His ease at failing is a reminder of the profound disadvantage humans have in overcoming death. His failure does not deter him, though. Death still terrifies him:

“The Thief of Life has a hold on my heart.

Death is sitting in my bedroom,

and wherever I turn, there too is death.”

We clearly understand that this obsession with death will not easily go away. Gilgamesh is given another chance to see if he has learned anything on his journey. He is told that there is a plant that gives immortality, but, after plucking it, a snake steals it away while he is bathing. This moment also provides the reason that snakes shed their skin in ancient Mesopotamian myth — they had captured immortality.

Gilgamesh cries, the limits of his mortal self revealed in full. He has twice been given the opportunity to achieve immortality, and twice his humanity has failed him. There will not be a third chance.

Understanding this, Gilgamesh returns to the city of Uruk. The end of the story is exactly as it was in the beginning: climb the wall, walk its length, look at its size.

Gilgamesh did not achieve physical immortality, but he did attain a form of spiritual immortality. His story, set down on a slab of stone, has been passed down through the ages. It preserves the wisdom of his journey and captures the plight of humanity. By failing to become immortal, Gilgamesh has given us a more enduring message, one that captures the complexity of a human life.

Tablet XII.

“Had I only left the ball with the carpenter today!”

Tablet XI technically ends the cyclical narrative of Gilgamesh. The final tablet is included as a sort of appendix from an older Sumerian tale. It is a separate story about Enkidu who offers to fetch Gilgamesh’s lost bat and ball from the underworld, but is taken and held captive.

It is thus another rumination on death, one that provides a fascinating look into ancient Mesopotamian ritual. Enkidu’s spirit is brought back “like a ghost,” and Gilgamesh demands to know what he saw below.

In a string of questions, Gilgamesh asks about different people, each with different amounts of sons. It becomes clear that the more children one has, the better their lot in the underworld — more children means more offerings. The man with one son, for example, “weeps bitterly, for his house belongs to the creditor,” whereas the man with seven sons “sits on a throne with the lower gods.”

It is not a matter of how well you live, but rather if you have people left behind to remember you. Remembrance is at the heart of Gilgamesh. 4,000 years later and we continue to read his story, bringing our own offerings to the epic and stoking the fires of memory.

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Additional Resources:

Books:

• Gilgamesh, trans. Sophus Helle

• Myths from Mesopotamia, trans. Stephanie Dalley

• Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation, Johannes Haubold et al.

• Gilgamesh Among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic, Theodore Ziolkowski

• The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell

Ancient Texts:

• “The Dialogue of Pessimism”

• “Ur-Nammu”

• “Adapa”

• “The Instructions of Shuruppag”

• Electronic Babylonian Library

Play an Ancient Mesopotamian Game:

• The Royal Game of Ur

Articles:

• “Doom Scrolling: Reading Ancient Texts,” Justin Germain

• “To ancient Assyrians, the liver was the seat of happiness,” Juha Lahnakoski & Ellie Bennett

Videos:

• “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” Lecture by Andrew George

• “Deciphering the world's oldest rule book,” Irving Finkel

• “The Bible and Western Culture: The Epic of Gilgamesh,” Michael Sugrue

• “The First Known Story Ever Written,” fig tree

• “Doublets and Contradictions, Seams and Sources,” Christine Hayes

• “Great Myths and Legends: Adapa the Sage: Flood, Myth and Magic in early Mesopotamia,”Steve Tinney

• “Great Beasts of Legend: Anzu the Lion Headed Eagle,”Steve Tinney

With this in mind, I wanted to create a similar canon for historical study. Below is a history book for every century, one that serves as an introduction to the era in which it was written. See it as a sort of travel guide to our past.

My choices are based on the texts I believe encapsulate an era and contribute to an ongoing dialogue throughout history. They build on one another and make it easier to understand subsequent ages.

The texts are meant to serve as a jumping off point. There are many other strong contenders with which one could explore the century, here are just a few.

Regardless of how you use them, the books will explain some of the most profound and exciting moments in our shared history. I hope that these texts will be a powerful illustration of human achievement.

The C.E. canon will soon follow!

Lege feliciter.

John Ruskin in his study at Brantwood, Cumbria, 1882.

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10th-9th c. B.C. ~ The Hebrew Bible

Specifically the translation by Robert Alter. It is a superb example of dedicated and determined creation; the translation took him almost 25 years to complete.

The prose is gorgeous; the poetry sublime. His translation proves why this is one of the most profound narratives of human history.

Reaching back to the beginning, the Bible furnishes a remarkable study in historical memory and transmission. An understanding of the Hebrew Bible is essential for historical study. Not only is it a text that illustrates significant historical themes — the rise and fall of civilizations, kingship, culture, myth, migration, etc. — but it is also built on, reinterpreted and utilized in every subsequent generation.

Alter also provides generous footnotes — so many that you will become lost in delightful historical and linguistic rabbit holes.

Glimpse the poetry of his translation in his description of the flood:

All the wellsprings of the great deep burst

and the casements of the heavens were opened.

8th c. B.C. — The Iliad, Homer

If the preview for the upcoming Odyssey movie has also irritated you (hello Batman Agamemnon), I suggest returning to The Iliad.

It is human emotion at its greatest heights. Though a controversial opinion, I much prefer Achilles’s rage and Hector’s heroism over Odysseus’s meanderings through the Mediterranean (Dante did put him in the Eighth Circle of Hell).

The Iliad is a significant historical text not only because it narrates ancient warfare, but also because it gives us profound insights into how a culture perceives itself.

Perhaps just as important, it makes ancient history relatable. I’ve found that history often opens up once students realize that they can connect with the past — that they feel the same way other people did thousands of years ago.

The Iliad is a deeply identifiable story, especially in the Fagles translation.

I leave you with his iconic opening lines:

Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,

murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,

hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,

great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,

feasts for the dogs and birds,

and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.

7th c. B.C. — Myths from Mesopotamia

Mesopotamian myths will transform your understanding of human history. While they offer seemingly familiar stories (i.e. flood myth, creation), they are unpredictable, veering into exciting new territory — the gods kill a god and fashion a human out of his parts; they send a flood to destroy humans because they are too noisy.

Herein lies their strength. They will encourage you to deepen your understanding of cultural consciousness and playfully ask questions about the human condition.

These stories have come to us from clay tablets, many of which lack bits and pieces, leaving us with fragmented narratives and gaps in understanding. Even these blank spots remind us that we are engaging with real history; it makes us think about how information is transmitted and appreciate single words in the weight they may carry for the story.

It is within these unexpected narratives that we realize the complexity of ancient knowledge, and are forced to grapple with our own understanding of how humans have thought about creation, society, and culture.

Here, we once again encounter the poetry of creation:

He placed her head, heaped up [ ]

Opened up springs: water gushed out.

He opened the Euphrates and Tigris from her eyes,

Closed her nostrils, [ ].

6th c. B.C. — The Art of War, Sun Tzu

It is the most famous study of strategy ever composed. The principles have been studied by numerous leaders, including Napoleon, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh. It has been popularized today among business leaders looking to gain an edge over their competition. The Art of War is a foundational text for military and political leadership, placed alongside other essential texts like Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Reading this will allow you to appreciate how history is shaped by powerful individuals and give you insights into their decision-making. A study of The Art of War helps us understand and interact with major military engagements, paving the way for the conquest chronicles of subsequent centuries.

Sun Tzu bestows his lessons with biting precision:

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

5th c. B.C. — The Histories, Herodotus

The Histories is groundbreaking in its historical analysis. It was one of the first attempts to record and understand the cause and effect chains for the events it chronicles. Cicero called Herodotus “the father of history.” The opening is iconic:

These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud.

Not only is it a masterpiece in historical study, but it is also a compelling narrative, documenting the rise of the Persian Empire and its combat with the Greeks. It is an exemplar of how to write engaging history, not just mere reporting but detailed thinking and dramatic storytelling.

I prefer the Landmark series for the ancient chronicles, as they are superbly organized. Every book includes maps, images, and footnotes, all with the aim of presenting a clearer, comprehensive image of events.

4th c. B.C. — The Campaigns of Alexander

The authoritative account of Alexander the Great’s conquests. Written by the Greek historian Arrian in the 2nd c. A.D., it is the most reliable narrative we have of Alexander’s campaigns across the Persian Empire and his journey into India.

Arrian himself was a military commander, thus lending significant insights into the strategy and decision-making of the world’s greatest military mind (though I am partial to Napoleon).

It is a study of the ambition and success of the individual; it narrates events that altered the course of Western civilization.

Arrian promises the reader a story unlike any other:

And if any man wonders why, after so many other men have written of Alexander, the compilation of this history came into my mind, after perusing the narratives of all the rest, let him read this of mine, and then wonder (if he can).

3rd c. B.C. — The Elements of Euclid, Euclid

Unsurprisingly, I am not a mathematics fan. I was devastated when I signed up for an astronomy course in college, thinking I would be learning about the composition of planets, when in reality it just turned out to be more math.

However, I can appreciate the tremendous value of Euclid’s Elements. It is the standard for mathematical learning, rigorously used in classrooms well into the 19th century.

I can also appreciate it much more when accompanied by glorious, colorful illustrations like those in Oliver Byrne’s edition. Published in 1847, this edition illustrated Euclid’s geometrical proofs in vibrant visual detail. Slogging through Euclid becomes much easier when one is surrounded by artistic beauty.

However, as Euclid said,

There is no Royal Road to Geometry.

2nd c. B.C. — The Rise of Rome, Polybius

Polybius was a fervent believer in the power of experience; he argued that for a historian to write good political history they had to experience politics first hand. Such an ideology he complimented with numerous eyewitness accounts and source material that is now lost to us in their entirety.

The Rise of the Roman Empire chronicles Rome’s ascent to power, namely through the First and Second Punic Wars. Polybius searched for answers to how and why Rome became a sweeping empire. In this sense, it is an essential text in understanding why empires rise, a phenomena that will need to be explained in dozens of subsequent cultures.

His writing is clear and insightful in regards to cultural practices and political decision-making.

And if you happen to think that understanding history helps us become better people, then you will get along splendidly with Polybius:

If earlier chroniclers of human affairs had failed to bear witness in praise of history, it might perhaps have been necessary for me to urge all readers to seek out and pay special attention to writings such as these; for certainly mankind possesses no better guide to conduct than the knowledge of the past.

1st c. B.C. — The Landmark Julius Caesar

The brilliant strategical thinking of one man in his own words. The Landmark Julius Caesar includes two works by Caesar himself, The Gallic War, the Civil War, and three other eye-witness accounts, the Alexandrian War, the African War, and the Spanish War.

The text is significant in understanding the events that led to the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. By reading these primary sources, you will be better able to engage with later historical works on the subject, significantly Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

It is excellent practice in historical analysis, as questions of subjectivity and reliability are vital to the work.

In the words of Caesar,

Alea iacta est — onto the C.E. centuries!

If you enjoyed this curriculum, please consider subscribing to A Country of the Mind to discover more of our past.

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Soviet Union propaganda, a man holds up the Soviet Union Constitution, 1936.

*For an overall history of the Gulag, read the introduction to this series —

Introduction

“How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? … Those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.”

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Before we can travel into the depths of the Gulag, we must first be arrested.

The Soviet Union’s justice system was a theatrical piece, the curtain hiding the truly dark interior of Soviet law. There were always arrests, always investigations, always trials, and always sentences. And the crimes that were prosecuted were always absurd.

Arrests could happen anywhere. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn describes,

“They take you aside in a factory corridor after you have had your pass checked – and you’re arrested. They take you from a military hospital with a temperature of 102 … They’ll take you right off the operating table – as they took N. M. Vorobyev, a school inspector, in 1936, in the middle of an operation for a stomach ulcer – and drag you off to a cell, as they did him, half-alive and all bloody … You are arrested … by a railway conductor, a taxi driver, a savings bank teller, the manager of a movie theater. Any one of them can arrest you, and you notice the concealed maroon-colored identification card only when it is too late.”

Mostly, arrests happened at home in the middle of the night.

An old Soviet joke describes the anxiety Ivan and his wife Marsha experienced when, late in the evening, they heard a knock on their door – and their immense relief when they discovered it was only the neighbor notifying them that the building was on fire.

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a prisoner.

“The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: You are under arrest.”

– Solzhenitsyn

Arrest is, as Solzhenitsyn describes, “an unassimilable spiritual earthquake.” You ask, Me? Why? And it is a question to which you will never receive a truthful answer.

If you are arrested at home, you will begin to pack things that you may need in prison. However, the OGPU/NKVD — the Soviet Union’s secret police agency — rushes you through this. They will tell you, “You don’t need anything. They’ll feed you there. It’s warm there” – all lies, Solzhenitsyn alerts us.

In the process of your arrest, the NKVD will confiscate anything that may point to your criminality (not to mention anything valuable for their own safe-keeping). Nothing was sacred during arrest — nor was it anywhere in the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn describes one horrific example:

“During the arrest of the locomotive engineer Inoshin, a tiny coffin stood in his room containing the body of his newly dead child. The [NKVD] dumped the child’s body out of the coffin and searched it.”

And this was only the beginning.

Former NKVD Lubyanka prison.

The Law of Arrests

Arrests began with the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917.

The first Soviet secret police organization, the Cheka, was established to control the widespread banditry following October Revolution. However, its functions soon grew to encompass prosecuting all counter-revolutionary activity in the aftermath of the Revolution. According to Bolshevik figures for 20 Russian provinces in 1918 and the first half of 1919, at least 8,398 people were shot without trial by the Cheka, and 87,000 arrested.

Most of the time, the reasons cited for arrest were broad, even arbitrary. One could create any justification to have someone arrested.

Moreover, arrest quotas were issued by higher levels of government, and it would be up to local police units to round up citizens to fulfill these numbers.

Because local units were pressured into securing high amounts of arrests, the legal code was self-consciously broad, making it easy to prosecute. On February 25th, 1927, Stalin issued his infamous Article 58 of the Penal Code. Under this article, the OGPU (precursor to the NKVD) was empowered to arrest anyone they deemed a threat to the Soviet government and Soviet way of life. Its wording was deliberately vague:

“In all truth, there is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58 …”

- Solzhenitsyn

Section 10 of Article 58 was particularly useful in that it criminalized “propaganda or agitation, containing an appeal for the overthrow, subverting, or weakening of the Soviet power … and, equally, the dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials of similar content.” Anything remotely critical of anything existing within the Soviet Union was punishable.

Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin.

The Chronology of Arrests

It was under this article that religion began to be prosecuted in the 1920s.

Describing it as a “political crime,” Article 58 targeted Orthodox believers throughout Russia, as the Soviet government feared ideological competition from the Church. Solzhenitsyn explains,

“The root destruction of religion in the country, which throughout the twenties and thirties was one of the most important goals of the GPU-NKVD, could be realized only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers.”

In his study on the history of socialism, Igor Shafarevich identities four main components of socialist ideology, one pillar being the abolition of religion. Though rarely codified through the outlawing of religious belief, most socialist states adopt a hostile attitude towards spiritual practice and find ways of eliminating religion through terror tactics, such as prosecution under Article 58.

In 1921, students and intellectuals began to be arrested for a similar lack of devotion to the state. Solzhenitsyn describes one such case:

“A student’s denunciation that a certain lecturer in a higher educational institution kept citing Lenin and Marx frequently but Stalin not at all was all that was needed for the lecturer not to show up for lectures any more.”

Towards the end of 1927, Stalin issued a number of proposals that, as historian Sheila Fitzpatrick notes, were comparable to the Law of Suspects in the French Revolution. The 1793 decree legalized the seizure of anyone suspected of being an enemy of the Revolution, allowing for the arrests of hundreds of thousands of people and prompting the Reign of Terror. Similarly, Stalin’s proposal, while not made public, concluded that “Everyone who arouses the slightest suspicion should be removed.”

Emblem for the Committee of Public Safety, responsible for much of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution.

Arrests were also regularly used to collect scapegoats for the economic problems created by the Soviet government. So-called conspiracies abounded in the late 1920s, invoked to explain food shortages and industrial failures. A massive wave of arrests followed Stalin’s blaming of the kulaks — “wealthy” peasant farmers — for hoarding grain and causing the man-made famine that gripped the country in the early 1930s. It was codified under Article 107 of the Criminal Code, which authorized the arrest of peasants and confiscation of their property if they failed to pay their grain quota.

The arrests continued into the 1930s and 1940s with increasing vigor. Draconian antitheft laws were introduced in 1932 and 1947, allowing for broader prosecution. Solzhenitsyn explains instances when this was enforced:

“If a young girl sent into the fields to get a few ears of grain took along two friends for company (“an organized gang”) or some 12-year-old youngsters went after cucumbers or apples, they were liable to get twenty years in camp.”

In 1937 the Great Purge swept through the Soviet Union. Mass numbers of party members were arrested and eliminated as “enemies of the people.”

This was in conjunction with mass arrests throughout the country against anyone associated with undesirable “political elements.” On average, 1,500 Soviet citizens were shot every day. Solzhenitsyn depicts the climate of fear:

“Arrests rolled through the streets and apartment houses like an epidemic. Just as people transmit an epidemic infection … so, too, they passed on the infection of inevitable arrest by a handshake, by a breath, by a chance meeting on the street. For if you are destined to confess tomorrow that you organized an underground group to poison the city’s water supply, and if today I shake hands with you on the street, that means I, too, am doomed.”

Many of the victims of the 1937-38 Purge were arrested and executed in prison, never even making it into the Gulag. NKVD records report more than 680,000 such executions.

Image from the Moscow Purge Trials.

Those that survived this first wave of terror were subjected to new orders in 1948. Stalin introduced new rules and sentences following World War II. These included sentences for:

• Alleged spies (once German and Japanese, now Anglo-American)

• Believers

• Geneticists and plant breeders, specifically supporters of Vavilov and Mendel, who had not previously been arrested

• VAT (Praise of American Technology), VAD (Praise of American Democracy), PZ (Toadyism Toward the West)

The sentences were longer. Crimes that would previously receive a “tenner” — 10 years in the camps — now received 25 years, while the “tenner” was reserved for juvenile offenders.

The climate was crippling. Solzhenitsyn denounces this particularly cruel wave of arrests:

“... Those unfortunates of 1937 vintage, who had succeeded in surviving ten impossible, unendurable years, and who in 1947-48, had timidly stepped forth onto the land of freedom … worn out, broken in health, but hoping to live out in peace what little of their lives remained. But some sort of savage fantasy … pushed the Victorious Generalissimo into issuing the order to arrest all those crippled over again, without any new charges!”

Arrest and Natural Selection

For the remainder of the operative years of the Gulag, citizens could be arrested for anything. Denunciations were anonymous, removing any responsibility. Over the years, people were arrested for their religion, foreign ties, non-Soviet nationalism, outdated political beliefs, and perceived wealth, not to mention for more sentimental reasons like resentment or a lack of patriotism. Solzhenitsyn himself was arrested for his correspondence with a school friend in which he criticized Stalin.

Orwellian thought-crime was a reality. In his ground-breaking novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), Solzhenitsyn illustrates the strange rules that governed Soviet citizens in a conversation between a Gulag officer and prisoner:

“The old folk say the sun is highest at dinnertime.”

“Maybe it was in their day!” the captain snapped back. “Since then it’s been decreed that the sun is highest at one o’clock.”

“Who decreed that?”

“The Soviet government.”

In another poignant vignette, Solzhenitsyn outlines the absurdity of party politics and the paralyzing fear of arrest that governed everyone’s actions. During the conclusion of a district party conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Everyone jumped to their feet, applauding. The applause lasted five full minutes before people began to get weary. Here we pick up with Solzhenitsyn’s narrative:

“It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop? … And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went on-six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! ... Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! … To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!

That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different… his interrogator reminded him: ‘Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!’

Now that’s what Darwin’s natural selection is. And that’s also how to grind people down with stupidity.”

Arrest could come for anyone; no one was safe.

And it is within this climate that we are forced to consider why, when millions of people were arrested over the course of more than half a century, why did no one resist?

Meeting of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union.

Resistance

It is clear that this question pains Solzhenitsyn, as he spends much of his reflection attempting to reason why he and many others did not speak out:

“‘Resistance! Why didn’t you resist?’ Today those who have continued to live on in comfort scold those who suffered. Yes, resistance should have begun right there, at the moment of arrest itself. But it did not begin.”

So, why?

Some of it can be explained by Russian culture and history. Stalin assumed the position of a tsar — though the official office had been eliminated with the abdication and murder of the Romanov family — a symbol of protection and virtue that permeated the Russian consciousness for much of its history. Many were convinced of Stalin’s inherent goodness and desire to lead them into a better life. One peasant years after Stalin’s death reflected:

“Perhaps it was a form of self-deception, but psychologically it made life much easier to bear, believing in the justice of Stalin.”

There was also a deeply rooted tradition of collective responsibility, stemming from medieval Russia. The duty to inform on others in one’s community, historian Orlando Figes points out, “was a long-established principle in Russian governance.”

Lastly, nearly everyone arrested was innocent under normal government circumstances, so many believed that their arrest was merely a mistake that would be rectified once they arrived in prison.

Solzhenitsyn describes this mentality as,

“The majority sit quietly and dare to hope. Since you aren’t guilty, then how can they arrest you? It’s a mistake! They are already dragging you along by the collar, and you still keep on exclaiming to yourself: ‘It’s a mistake! They’ll set things straight and let me out!’ Others are being arrested en masse, and that’s a bothersome fact, but in those other cases there is always some dark area: ‘Maybe he was guilty…?’ But as for you, you are obviously innocent!”

The others being arrested? Perhaps they were guilty, which is why you convince yourself that you do not have a duty to speak out. And it is this feeling of universal innocence which, Solzhenitsyn points out, leads to a universal failure to act:

“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.”

For those of us assume we would have the strength to call out, we should not be so certain. However, perhaps in learning about others’ experiences we can become prepared for the possibility of doing so.

______

Perhaps you went kicking and screaming; perhaps you went silently. Regardless, you have been arrested.

For what, you ask?

To be informed of the charges against you, you must first be brought to prison.

And it will be here that you will develop the skills that will either save or destroy you when you inevitably enter the Gulag.

This essay is part of a series on life in the Gulag. To read the next installment, Prison, subscribe to my substack!

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Bibliography

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag: A Very Short Introduction by Alan Barenberg

The Russian Revolution by Sheila Fitzpatrick

The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes

Gulag prisoners building a construction project.

Opening Note to the Series

This is a project that is very dear to me. After years of working in education, I have been shocked to discover that most students are unaware of the existence of the Russian Gulag. Even outside of the classroom, I rarely meet people familiar with the Soviet Union’s concentration camps. Each year, students around the world are taught in devastating detail the horrors of the Holocaust. Why is it that such an education is never extended to the Soviet holocaust — a system of mass murder that spanned decades and resulted in the deaths of millions?

In a small attempt to rectify this, I developed and taught a semester class on the Gulag. However, during my research, I was frustrated at the lack of resources available. There are a handful of phenomenal books — namely Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History, both of which I will draw on extensively — but there is a distinct lack of online educational resources, especially when compared to those available for other mass murders of the 20th century.

In addition, there was an emotional struggle in researching this topic. It is a difficult history to be immersed in; the opening of every book also opens very painful feelings. Soviet scholar Robert Conquest noted that it took so many years to write his foundational book on the Soviet terror-famine of Ukraine (the Holodomor) because he had to stop writing to catch his breath — the horrors of the history took a physical toll.

After many months within the world of the Gulag, I understand him. While there are stories of heroism, courage and kindness scattered throughout, one very rarely comes across them; it is, fundamentally, a very dark history. It takes a real effort to engage with this history: not because it is uninteresting, but rather because of the weariness it lays upon one’s soul.

This essay is intended as an introduction to the history, growth and development of the Gulag. It is an overview of the entire system and meant to familiarize people with its basic history and structure. Following this, I will be releasing a series of essays following a prisoner’s typical journey through the Gulag: arrest, prison, camps, and release.

As we begin our perilous journey into the Soviet Gulag, we are encouraged by the words of the Gulag’s most famous prisoner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

“One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a prisoner in the Gulag.

The Silence

“There is always this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.’ Alas, all the evil of the 20th century is possible everywhere on earth.”

So Alexander Solzhenitsyn reminds readers at the beginning of The Gulag Archipelago. The Soviet Union Gulag is one of the worst atrocities committed in the entirety of human history. Yet, most of us in the West remain ignorant of it. Why? Is it because we believe it could not happen here? Because we fail to learn or understand Russian history? Or, perhaps more controversially, why is it that communism is not decried in the same way that Nazism is? The communist hammer and sickle insignia is widely accepted — printed on t-shirts, flown as flags, tattooed on arms — and is in no way objected to in the same way as the Nazi insignia, despite millions more people dying as a result of the communist Soviet regime than under Hitler’s fascism.

It is not ignorance; we cannot use the excuse that we did not know. By the end of the 1920s, much was already known in the West about the Soviet camps. In fact, from the Russian Revolution onwards, official information about the camps was available, even to those outside of Russia. In her introduction to Gulag: A History, historian Anne Applebaum makes the case that “to condemn the Soviet Union too thoroughly would be to condemn a part of what some of the Western Left once held dear.” Moreover, no one wanted to consider that America — bastion of freedom and democracy — won the Second World War with the help of a mass murderer, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, simply displacing one murderer for another.

While the Nuremberg Trials were bringing thousands of Nazi murderers to justice, the Gulag was still an essential part of Soviet life. As Solzhenitsyn decries, “by 1966 eighty six thousand Nazi criminals had been convicted in West Germany. And still we choke with anger here. We do not hesitate to devote to the subject page after newspaper page and hour after hour of radio time.” Where is the justice for the millions who died in the Gulag? In 2025, we have yet to witness a single trial against anyone involved in the camps. Our silence on this moment in history speaks volumes. As Solzhenitsyn warns us, it can — and likely will — happen again. Shame on us who fail to remember.

The Nuremberg Trials, November 20, 1945.

Bolshevik Beginnings

“Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in history, was there a regime more vicious, more bloodthirsty, and at the same time more cunning and ingenious than the Bolshevik, the self-styled Soviet regime.” (Solzhenitsyn)

The Gulag was a system of mass concentration camps spread across the Soviet Union. GULAG, in Russian, stands for “Main Camp Administration.” The idea was conceived under Vladimir Lenin — communist leader of the Bolshevik Party — and was codified and expanded under the reign of Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from 1924 to his death in 1953.

Historians and prisoners rightfully agree that the camps were “a country within a country” — the geographic spread of the camps was enormous. It began in the islands of Solovetsky and flung its arms across the entirety of the Soviet Union. Although numbers vary, there is an overall consensus that between 1930 and 1960 more than 25 million people were imprisoned or exiled. Within this timeframe, one in five prisoners were executed.

To understand the genesis of the Gulag and the scope of its horror, we must first begin in Tsarist Russia. The Gulag has roots in the forced labor brigades that operated in Siberia from the 17th to 20th centuries; between 1824 and 1889 alone, 720,000 settlers were forced to work in the extreme conditions of Siberia.

Mass execution and imprisonment, however, were unique to the Gulag. In fact, as Solzhenitsyn points out, capital punishment was used sparingly in Tsarist Russia — from 1876 to 1904, only about 17 people per year were executed. When 1905 saw a spike of executions, following the 1905 Revolution, voices called it an “epidemic of executions.” The Bolsheviks, creators of the Gulag, even criticized the 1917 government for reinstating capital punishment.

The Bolsheviks — the revolutionary communist group led by Lenin that would go on to create the Soviet Union — like any good follower of Karl Marx believed that crime was a product of capitalism and would disappear with the advent of communism. This obviously proved untrue, and by the summer of 1918 Lenin demanded that “unreliable elements” be locked up in camps. A policy of “red terror” was introduced in the fall:

“Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin … let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie – more blood, as much as possible …” (Bolshevik Newspaper)

By 1921, 84 camps were created, all of which aimed at the “rehabilitation” of prisoners, helping them become successful members of the new Soviet society.

The Solovetsky Monastery, location of the first permanent camp.

The First Camp: Solovetsky

The first camp designed with the idea of permanence was Solovetsky, built on an archipelago spreading across islands in the White Sea. Solovetsky had once been a monastery; its high walls and cold winds seemed to breed loneliness. It was here that the experiment of slave labor began.

“As you know here, there is no Soviet authority, only Solovetsky authority. Any rights you had before you can forget. Here we have our own laws.”

By all accounts, Solovetsky was a disastrous place. Devastatingly, it is also remembered as one of the most mild prisons of the Gulag. Prisoners sent to the archipelago found themselves overworked, starved, tortured, and diseased. One fourth to one half of all prisoners died of epidemics each year.

Perhaps the most important development Solovetsky produced was that of Naftaly Frenkel. Frenkel’s story is shrouded in mystery, but he miraculously found his way from a prisoner to the camp commander. It was under him that Solovetsky was transformed into a profitable economic institution, and this success likely contributed to the transition of the Gulag into economic labor camps.

Frenkel saw all prisoners as potential laborers and pioneered the system of sorting prisoners into three groups: heavy work, light work, and invalids. Based on one’s group, there were different sets of tasks — and different quotas of food. One camp chart shows “800 grams of bread and 80 grams of meat given to the first group; 500 grams of bread and 40 grams of meat to the second group; and 400 grams of bread and 40 grams of meat to the third group.” As Applebaum points out, the system quickly sorted prisoners into those who would survive and those who would not.

Map of the spread of Gulag camps, 1951.

Stalin Takes Control

In 1929, Stalin began to take a significant interest in the camps; he saw them as an opportunity to speed up industrialization and help excavate resources. Forced labor provided a free and seemingly profitable opportunity to contribute to his Five Year Plan — an effort to rapidly industrialize the country.

Stalin demanded regular reports on the productivity of the camps. Applebaum notes an important question for historians: Did the camps come about haphazardly, as a side effect of collectivization, industrialization, and the other processes taking place in the country? Or did Stalin carefully plot the growth of the Gulag, planning in advance to arrest millions of people?

The Gulag was also utilized as an opportunity to highlight the superiority of communism through massive construction projects. One of the most ambitious — and most disastrous — was that of the White Sea Canal. It was an extremely ambitious project: the goal was to connect the White Sea with the Baltic Sea in under 20 months. Stalin specifically stated that he wanted to project to be built with slave labor; Gulag inmates were shipped in, numbering around 170,000. Many inmates were transported from the Solovetsky Islands, including ex-inmate Nafty Frenkel. He managed the canal work from November 1931 until its completion in August 1933. The canal was completed without any modern technology; all tools were handmade — and broke constantly.

A book was written to showcase the “success” of the White Sea Canal, entitled The Canal Named for Stalin. As Applebaum points out, the book is an extraordinary testament to the corruption of Soviet writers. The account is littered with heartwarming stories of prisoners “reforming” themselves through their work. This was during a time in which the Gulag still advertised itself as a “reforming” institution. One such example is seen in a poem “written” by one of the canal workers:

“But then they took me to the canal/Everything past now seems a bad dream/It is as if I were reborn/I want to work, and live and sing.”

At the same time, canal bosses told workers,

“You are obliged to create something valuable to the state with your work, and we are obliged to make of you someone who is valuable to the state.”

It is estimated that 25,000 prisoners died building the canal. The canal itself was an utter failure: it was practically inaccessible and barely used.

The White Sea Canal outlined in red.

Aside from construction projects, Gulag prisoners were also used to populate remote regions of Russia. Solzhenitsyn describes the process as,

“... the authorities began to round up the very best farmers and their families, and to drive them, stripped of their possessions, naked, into the northern wastes, into the tundra and the taiga.”

These exile settlements transported families and individuals from across the country and deposited them in some of the most remote, dangerous and deadly regions of Russia. The process, called the “Opening Up of the Far North,” was seen as a triumph over nature — a victory for communism in its ability to harness the human spirit and exert its will.

The most famous area subject to the “Opening Up of the Far North” was Kolyma, a word that came to signify some of the greatest of hardships of the Gulag. Within the labor camps, inmates were expected to engage in mining and construction, all taking place in an area covered in permafrost. It is one of the most inhospitable regions of Russia: in winter, temperatures drop as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit and in summer, clouds of mosquitoes attack without rest.

The Heights of the Gulag

Beginning in the year 1937, the nature of the Gulag changed. It was also the year of the Great Purge — the imprisonment, execution and exile of thousands of state party members. The moment was marked with the issuance of Order No. 00447 in August of 1937. The order initiated one of the most violent and aggressive terrors in the Soviet Union and aimed to eliminate “anti-Soviet elements” from society. The result was 1.5 million new convictions in 16 months with at least 680,000 of these prisoners condemned to death.

It was in this year, Applebaum points out, that Gulag camps were transformed from indifferently managed prisons into intentional death camps where prisoners were worked to death or murdered in large numbers.

By the early 1950s, the Gulag reached its highest level of prisoners. Despite its dominating role in the Soviet economy, it was starting to become clear to everyone — except Stalin — that the camps were wasteful and unprofitable.

Stalin, determined to showcase the possibilities of Gulag labor, launched another wave of unsuccessful construction projects. The most famous of these was the Kolyma Highway, infamously monikered the “Road of Bones,” built with slave labor from the Gulag camps. The project was typical of Gulag initiatives: plagued with a lack of equipment, little food, and violent and unproductive leadership. However, these projects and resettlement colonies were continued throughout Stalin’s life, as emblematic of the superiority and strength of communist resolve.

The Thaw

Stalin died in 1953, and his death marked a shift in the development of the Gulag. By the summer of 1954, it was widely accepted that the camps were unprofitable. Restrictions on prisoners were relaxed, including measures such as bringing back the 8 hour workday, allowing for easier early release, and permitting prisoners to write letters. After Nikita Khrushchev came to power following Stalin’s death, he pushed for fast investigations into individual cases in an effort to release additional prisoners.

This continued into the 1960s. However, the camps were given new energy under the next General Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev. A wave of new arrests occurred under him, targeting people for literary, religious or political opposition to Soviet system.

Finally, in 1987, a new General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, began to dismantle the Gulag system on a mass scale. His policy of “Glasnost” or “openness” was intended only to be an economic policy; however, it quickly bled over into every area of Soviet rule, ultimately questioning the very legitimacy of communist power.

A general pardon was issued to all Soviet political prisoners 1986.

The momentous occasion received little attention, whether in Russia or international news.

This essay is the beginning of a series on life in the Gulag. To read the next installment, Arrest, follow along on my substack!

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Bibliography

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag: A Very Short Introduction by Alan Barenberg

James Tissot, Young Lady in A Boat, 1870.

In 2001, Stephanie Meyer published the first novel in the Twilight series. The plot — if you did not participate in the sweeping drama— follows a young girl, Bella, who moves to Forks, Washington and falls in love with a vampire, Edward. How does a teenage vampire romance relate to 19th-century French literature? The link lies in the world view of their characters. In Twilight, Bella is a fundamentally ordinary girl. In fact, she is so plain and ordinary that many have been led to question why Edward — her opposite in that he is special — would fall in love with such an unexceptional girl.

Today, this is a popular plot in romance novels: the exceptional man falling in love with the exceptionally ordinary woman. We have created the “ordinary girl syndrome” (my term) in which normal, ordinary people expect exceptional people to fall in love with them, simply because they are ordinary. Despite offering nothing unique, these characters suggest some unspoken, unidentified (and nonexistent) promise that they are somehow “not like everyone else,” regardless of being, in fact, just like everyone else.

Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary represents the pinnacle of the “ordinary girl syndrome.” The novel follows an unexceptional woman — perhaps exceptional only in her profound delusion of thinking she is exceptional — and her disappointment and resentment when she discovers that she is destined to live an ordinary life. Madame Bovary gives voice to our deepest fears of being ordinary and shows the consequences of allowing imagination and expectation to invade and dictate our reality.

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Auguste Renoir, A Road in Louveciennes, 1870.

The Fall of Idols

Emma Bovary’s delusions begin at a young age. Raised by her father and sent to a convent for her education, Emma cultivates dreams about her future life, filled with fantastic adventures. Partly contributing to these dreams are her novels, which she reads voraciously while in the convent. It is no surprise that she dreams up such a life for herself, as within them,

“Couriers were killed at every relay, horses ridden to death on every page; there were gloomy forests, broken hearts, vows, sobs, tears, and kisses, skiffs in the moonlight, nightingales in thickets; the noblemen were all brave as lions, gentle as lambs, incredibly virtuous, always beautifully dressed, and wept copiously on every occasion.”

The action is constant, the emotions are endless. These fictional worlds create expectations for Emma’s life, and she cultivates the confidence that she deserves them.

The dreams are carried into her marriage with Charles Bovary. Emma anticipates marriage to be a grand adventure; however, living in 19th-century provincial France, there are limited opportunities for such a life. Nevertheless, she has high expectations for her love:

“Love, to her, was something that comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightning — a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping away every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.”

When she marries Charles and discovers that this torrent of feelings is absent, she believes that she could not truly be in love with him:

“Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words ‘bliss,’ ‘passion,’ and ‘rapture’ — words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.”

Emma mistakes novels for narratives of real life. It is the standard to which she holds all of her experiences. When Charles fails to live up to heroic adventurer and passionate lover, she condemns him with the crime of being ordinary. Where, she asks, is this extraordinary life she was promised? Rather than create this life for herself, she believes that marriage will simply provide it for her. Although she does not bring anything unique to the marriage (save for her inner delusions), she expects Charles to create an exceptional life for her. She laments,

“Wasn’t it a man’s role, though, to know everything? Shouldn’t he be expert at all kinds of things, able to initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all the mysteries? This man could teach you nothing; he knew nothing, wished for nothing. He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought him.”

Charles offers stability and peace; Emma yearns for thrills and adventure. She never seeks to provide this for herself, rather she searches for others to bestow this on her. When Charles fails to supply the drama she desires, Emma finds it in a string of lovers. In each man she continues the search for a lover worthy of her romance novels:

“‘I have a lover! I have a lover!’ she kept repeating to herself, reveling in the thought as though she were beginning a second puberty. At last she was going to know the joys of love, the fever of the happiness she had despaired of. She was entering a marvelous realm where all would be passion, ecstasy, rapture: she was in the midst of an endless blue expanse, scaling the glittering heights of passion; everyday life had receded, and lay far below, in the shadows between those peaks.”

In adultery, she seeks excitement and passion and confuses this with love, which is steadfast and brings peace. When Emma finds herself disillusioned even in these relationships, she becomes angry and resentful, preferring to part with the men rather than parting with her ideals.

Ivan Kramskoy, Reading Woman, c. 1866.

Emma’s Search for Meaning

Emma’s real search is not for adventure. It is within her different identities and stories that she searches for a sense of meaning. To accomplish this, Emma forces herself into states of suffering, believing that artificially experiencing pain will imbue her with a kind of distinctiveness. While at the convent, she romanticizes suffering:

“When she went to confession she invented small sins in order to linger on her knees there in the darkness, her hands joined, her face at the grille, the priest whispering just above her.”

When her lover leaves her, Emma fashions a new, distinguishing identity:

“Among the illusions born of her hope, she glimpses a realm of purity in which she aspired to dwell … She conceived the idea of becoming a saint. She bought rosaries and festooned herself with holy medals … she was convinced that hers was the most exquisite Catholic melancholy that had ever entered an ethereal soul.”

These fantasies and identities are devised to make Emma feel special, but since they are inauthentic they always fail to provide her meaning, leaving her perpetually dissatisfied.

Ultimately, Emma does not take responsibility for her own happiness; she tries to outsource her happiness to artificial identities and other people. When they do not furnish this, she places the blame on others rather than herself. The primary criminal is Charles:

“Wasn't he the obstacle to every kind of happiness, the cause of all her wretchedness, the sharp-pointed prong of this many-stranded belt that bound her on all sides? So he became the sole object of her resentment.”

This is the essential point: she does not hate Charles, she hates herself. Not because her life is boring, but because she is boring. She tries to live through others rather than creating her own sense of meaning and worth. When others do not provide happiness or fulfillment, she searches for some sort of life change — new curtains, a new dress, a new lover — to manifest these things, without realizing that they are intangible and must come from an inner place.

Emma fails to find meaning as a wife, mother, lover or even simply as a woman — she hates her own sex, despairing when she gives birth to a daughter, rather than a son. She sees these roles as merely parts to play, identities to try on and then cast off if proved unsatisfactory:

“There were no illusions left now! She had had to part with some each time she ventured on a new path, in each of her successive conditions — as virgin, as wife, as mistress; all along the course of her life she had been losing them, like a traveler leaving a bit of his fortune in every inn along the road. But what was making her so unhappy?”

Emma never discovers the true source of her unhappiness. Her failure lies in assuming herself owed something greater. Despite being ordinary, she expects her life to be extraordinary, and when it fails to manifest, she assumes others are jeopardizing the life she was promised. She fails to understand that the only thing that could raise her above the ordinary is the creation of an authentic, individualized sense of meaning.

J.M. Gonzalez, A Little Love Affair, 19th c.

Out, Out Brief Candle

Emma’s death is a final irony. She contrives a romantic death, but instead her end is realistic and ugly. Her ideals come crashing down, struck by the bitter realities of life. Emma tries to manhandle life, but death deprives of her of this final exertion of her will.

Ultimately, Emma dies without finding any meaning. Not only this, she leaves the world much worse than she found it. She has destroyed lives: Charles is heartbroken upon discovering her affairs (likely dying as a result) and her daughter is left an orphan, working in a cotton mill. Real people always came second to Emma’s delusions. Her sense of entitlement allowed her to sanction any behavior so long as it fed into her resentment.

Gustav Flaubert famously wrote “Emma Bovary c’est moi.” Although Madame Bovary does speak to a part of the human condition, I hope she is not us. Self-righteous to the end, Emma Bovary proves to be quite the literary villain. If this is humanity, it is a dark condemnation of us. We are owed nothing and promised nothing in life, save for the chance to live — not reside in fantasies. It is only through authentic living that one has the opportunity to become extraordinary.

This article was inspired by my reading of Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert.

*All quotes are taken from the translation by Francis Steegmuller.

Frederic Edwin Church, View of Cotopaxi, 1857.

*This essay includes spoilers.

As a hurricane whips through the streets of Macondo, the final pages of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude similarly fly past, a fever dream culminating in the condemnation of the Buendía family. García Márquez’s novel, a paragon of magical realism, is not a morality tale — the Buendía family produces so many moral failings over the generations that such a reading would be far too simple. Instead, their failure to live up to basic ethics serves to underscore the repetitive nature of humans and our inability to learn from our past.

One Hundred Years of Solitude narrates humanity from creation to the fall and from exile to apocalypse, proving that, despite multiple opportunities to repeat creation and prevent the fall, we consistently fail to choose and create something different. The novel witnesses multiple creations, dozens of falls and chances at redemption, and in the final scene, the entirety of scripture is condensed into a single moment. It is creation, the fall, and the end days — and yet this time there will be no chance at redemption. The final pages present a magnificent and dramatic commentary deeply rooted in biblical tradition. Just as the Bible sets out to narrate the whole of human history and experience, One Hundred Years of Solitude similarly utilizes scriptural metaphors and archetypes to present a powerful rumination on humanity and our inability to overcome our collective history.

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Frederic Edwin Church, View on the Magdalena River, 1857.

Macondo as History and Scripture

In a collection of five paintings, 19th-century artist Thomas Cole presents an argument for the cyclical nature of civilizations in his famous series “The Course of Empire.” Despite their seemingly classical themes, Cole assures viewers that the paintings are not intended to represent any particular empire; rather, they are representative of all civilizations. Similarly, One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles the history of a civilization from its humble origins into a sprawling village. In this way, Márquez uses Macondo as a heterocosm to explore the repetitive nature of history.

Yet, there is another layer — Macondo is a microcosm of scripture and therefore of humanity’s entire narrative. As Melquíades’ parchments prophesies, the story of the Buendía family is also the story of the Bible:

“The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.”

In Genesis, Adam and Eve fall when they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Similarly, José Arcadio Buendía’s moral failing is his obsessive pursuit of knowledge, often at the expense of his family. Thus, he is condemned to be tied to a tree, symbolic of his own tree of knowledge, which he unknowingly tied himself to through his obsession. Each decision to remain in his laboratory tightened the ropes further — he tried to become like God, and in his quest was driven to madness.

The prophecy is complete when Aureliano Buendía’s child — the last of the Buendía line — is consumed by ants. This gruesome scene parallels the plagues of the Book of Revelation, including swarms of locust, which are doled out by angels holding bowls containing the wrath of God. It is not difficult to interpret these final scenes as those of a wrathful divinity; after all of the moral failings of the Buendía family, it is unsurprising to see the family succumb to the apocalyptic scenes of Revelation.

The final storm ultimately wipes the Macondo and all memory of its existence from the earth. As Aureliano Buendía tries to decipher Melquíades’ parchments,

“Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane.”

Like Sodom and Gomorrah and the Flood, humanity must answer for its sins through its own destruction. The very town becomes corrupted; therefore, Macondo itself must perish as retribution for the generations of sins committed by the Buendía family.

Thomas Cole, Desolation, 1836.

Condemnation

One Hundred Years of Solitude concludes with a powerful denunciation of the Buendía family:

“Everything written on [the parchments] was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”

There is such force in this final, ominous line — redemption is withheld from the Buendía family. Perhaps we are surprised to see such harsh judgement. However, every generation had the opportunity to refuse repeating the mistakes of the past, but they chose wrong every time.

In this way, the novel takes on a particularly Jewish notion of sin, in which punishment is spread out through the generations rather than apportioned only on the party committing the sin. The sins of the family are visited not only on the children, but on the community as a whole. Life progressively worsens for Macondo as the Buendías continue to intermarry, culminating in the horrific Banana Massacre. Sin corrupts both the individual and the community.

But where is God? He feels notably absent in the novel, despite making short appearances in empty statements from the characters. The final pages have no mention of God, despite the clear parallels to biblical stories. God seems to be fluttering over the pages as He once hovered over the waters, but we cannot quite pin Him down.

Ultimately, the final sentence of the novel offers more questions than answers. Who is it that decides this condemnation? Is it God or did they condemn themselves? And who offers — or in this case refuses to offer — second chances?

Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859.

Divine Time and Man’s Memory

Although the novel moves forward in time, the Buendía family is firmly rooted in their past, determined to live in their memories. In the final moments of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Aureliano Buendía continues this family tradition:

“… [he] wandered aimlessly through the town, searching for an entrance that went back to the past.”

“He was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past.”

The characters’ inability to live in the present and the weight of the family’s moral and personal failings results in an incapacity to grow and develop for every character.

The novel challenges our own understanding of time and memory. It is an unnerving reality — Macondo is “gone,” destroyed in the hurricane, but we have “proof” of its actuality in the very existence of the novel. Macondo and the memory of the Buendías have been wiped from the earth, but perhaps the novel itself is proof that they did exist. In this way, García Márquez challenges us to consider how historical and collective memory are formed. Most of us never leave a trace of our existence. Perhaps our memory is carried around for a while, like the bones of Rebeca’s parents, until finally they are buried, and all that was part of us or our world slowly disappears.

Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.” In this sense, can we consider the Buendías really gone? They continue to exist within the pages of this book, and in this way Márquez has preserved their memory and thus made them immortal.

Ultimately, there is no clear moral message. García Márquez is not a prescribing writer; he does not try to advocate for a certain morality. Rather, he encourages reflection. He wants readers to recognize that individual decisions have consequences, both for ourselves and our communities. But can we truly learn from our personal and collective histories? We are given a chance to choose differently. But perhaps we too, like the Buendías, are condemned to repeat the past.

In the words of Lord Byron,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

There is a moral of all human tales: 
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
First freedom, and then glory; when that fails, 
Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last. 
And history, with all her volumes vast, 
Hath but one page.

This article was inspired by my reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

*All quotes are taken from the translation by Gregory Rabassa.

The Château de Montaigne.

Early in 1570, Michel de Montaigne nearly died. While riding in the woods with a few servants and companions, Montaigne was unexpectedly thrown off his horse. Everyone was certain his end was near. Montaigne was carried home, and, laying in bed, he recalled himself “oozing away so gently.” For three days he struggled against Death — a battle so profound that later he reported, “I can still feel the effects of that battering” — until on the third day, “it appeared to me that lightning had struck my soul with a jolt and that I was coming back from the other world.” His return to this world was transformative. At 36 years old, having defeated Death, Montaigne decided to change his life.

The mid-life crisis is famous for producing some of the most significant works of literature. Dante Alighieri, for example, describes his own mid-life crisis in The Divine Comedy, conceptualizing this moment as a disorienting journey through a dark wood. He universalizes the experience, writing:

“Midway on the journey of our lives / I came to myself in a dark wood, / for the straight way was lost.”

It is clear that Montaigne’s near-death experience was not a typical mid-life crisis — his dark wood was much more literal than that of Dante. However, his response to the event proves that it is never too late to reinvent ourselves.

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Latin inscription on the wall of Montaigne’s library.

The Philosophy of Home Renovations

Following his brush with Death, Montaigne underwent two significant life changes. The first was leaving politics. After 13 years of work in the government of Bordeaux, he stepped away. The second occurred on his 38th birthday. Across the wall leading to his library, Montaigne commemorated his retirement by painting a Latin inscription, declaring his new intentions:

“In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of 38, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [the Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.”

His home renovations did not stop there. He repurposed one of his two towers into what he referred to as his “room above the shop,” reserved for writing and contemplation. Montaigne believed that we all need a space dedicated to ourselves — a refuge away from the company of others in which our minds are given the freedom to explore. Montaigne assures us that such a pursuit requires difficult work. He would write:

“It is a thorny undertaking — more than it looks — to follow so roaming a course as that of our mind’s, to penetrate its dark depths and its inner recesses, to pick out and pin down the innumerable characteristics of its emotions.”

In his main chamber, he painted the roof beams with classical quotes, including Euripides and Sophocles. He found comfort surrounded by the words of these intellectual giants. Similar to the evening routine of Machiavelli, he found kinship with the men of antiquity. In a letter to a friend, Machiavelli describes:

“When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for.”

One can imagine Montaigne, as he constructed his library, eagerly awaiting similar meetings with his idols. Thus, preparation for Montaigne’s retirement was complete. Now, it was time to turn inward.

Roof beams in Montaigne’s library. For a detailed description of each beam, click here.

Know Thyself

It was in these years of devoted contemplation that Montaigne produced his remarkable Essays. Unlike other philosophers who tackled universal questions of free will, morality or reality, Montaigne dedicated his study entirely to gaining knowledge about himself. In one of his essays, he described:

“For many years now the target of my thoughts has been myself alone; I examine nothing, I study nothing, but me; and if I do study anything else, it is so as to apply it at once to myself, or more correctly, within myself.”

Many modern readers may view this perspective as profoundly self-absorbed; however, Montaigne has a poignant message for any who find fault in his contemplation:

“If I seemed to myself to be good or wise — or nearly so — I would sing it out at the top of my voice. To say you are worse than you are is not modest but foolish … no virtue is helped by falsehood.”

Just as other philosophers searched for Truth, so Montaigne argued that there existed Truth within the self; the study of oneself would provide the opportunity to shed greater light on these intimate parts. And if we discover truths about ourselves — whether good or bad — why hide them? It is only through knowledge of oneself that one may develop an even greater understanding of one’s place in the world.

Moreover, Montaigne believed that knowing oneself is no easy task. Truly, he argued, no labor was harder or more rewarding:

“No description is more difficult than the describing of oneself; and none, certainly, is more useful.”

While many of us focus on solving overwhelming and out-of-reach worldly problems, Montaigne reminds us that before we attempt to find these solutions, we must first turn an inquiring eye upon ourselves. How can we possibly provide enlightened answers about morality or world affairs without first examining our own morals and affairs? We must retreat into our own “room above the shop” and spend time first knowing ourselves. Montaigne concluded:

“You should no longer be concerned with what the world says of you but with what you say to yourself.”

Montaigne’s library.

Montaigne Conquers Death

Returning to his old foe and the impetus of his new life, Montaigne revisits Death in his Essays. One may think that his earlier meeting would alert Montaigne to his own terrifying mortality. On the contrary, he describes death as a close companion:

“Death is one of the attributes you were created with; death is a part of you; you are running away from yourself.”

Moreover, Montaigne argues, we must become friends with Death. We must deprive Death of its power over us by removing its “strangeness.” The more we are accustomed to Death — much like the more we are familiar with ourselves — the less its uncertainty is perceived as a threat.

“Let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death.”

Montaigne clearly achieved this relationship with Death. Knowledge of his own mortality did not lead him to fear; rather, he found a remarkable freedom in this knowledge:

“We do not know where death awaits us; so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”

It is an extraordinary perspective, one that could only emerge after years of dedicated reflection.

Humanity is much richer since Montaigne fell off his horse. His Essays are some of the most profound meditations on human life, and the depth and breadth of his knowledge remain poignant encouragement for us to engage in similar practices. Montaigne teaches us that it is never too late to alter our life course. A room is always waiting for us, silently welcoming us into our own company and handing us the means of our own discovery.

“We have lived quite enough for others: let us live at least this tail-end of life for ourselves.”

This article was inspired by my reading of Essays by Michel de Montaigne.

*All quotes of Montaigne are taken from the Penguin Classics translation.

“On a Friday afternoon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”

Thus begins Brother Juniper’s quest to uncover whether divine intervention exists. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder’s 1928 Pulitzer Prize novel, is a philosophical puzzle — an exploration into whether our lives are regulated by the dictates of divine fate or if life is pure chance, strung together by human choices. Although Wilder adheres to structural elements of morality stories, he denies the reader one of its core attributes — a clear answer. This ambiguity and search for an answer calls for the reader to actively engage with the story, puzzling their way through the intricacies of the characters’ lives and forcing them to draw conclusions about the very nature of human existence.

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‘Why did this happen to those five?’

When five seemingly innocent people plunge to their deaths, one man sets out to discover why. “If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life,” Brother Juniper reasons, “surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off.” We have two options, he decides:

“Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.”

Armed with this prerequisite, Brother Juniper is determined to learn all he can about the lives of these five people in order to discover the impetus behind their deaths. He is, essentially, a product of the Enlightenment, a time in which human reason was exalted for its ability to reveal the secrets of the universe. His Enlightenment-era sensibilities tell him that he can use science to discover the complexities of religion and ultimately determine why these five people died prematurely. This is a grounding element of the novel — the belief that man can harness reason and logic to provide explanations for faith.

And so, one Enlightened man tries to provide an answer to one of the most pressing philosophical questions: is human life ruled by a higher power or governed by human action and chance?

Divine Salvation or Punishment?

As one might expect, the novel does not provide a clear answer. Ambiguity follows Brother Juniper’s wanderings. As he traverses the lives of the deceased, the reader is lead along simultaneously searching for answers. Is this why she was chosen to die? Did this action lead him here? The essential question is whether death at this moment makes sense in the context of lives of these characters.

The end of each chapter proclaims the death of a character — no conclusion, no explanation. Equipped with the crucial moments of their lives, supplied by Brother Juniper, the reader must decide what, if anything, led the characters to this tragic moment. Do the events of their lives explain the tragedy that befell them? Can we see the hand of God at work?

Take, for example, the character of Marquesa de Montemayor. One evening, in the midst of prayer, she whispers:

“Let me live now … let me begin again.”

She plummets to her death the next morning.

If all is ruled by God’s plan, this could be viewed as either divine salvation or punishment. Is she given a new life through her death? Or, rather, is she punished for the trespasses in her life that lead her to wish such a thing?

For practically every character one could see it both ways - death releases them from the tragedy of their lives, providing them, in the context of religion, with a new and better afterlife. Or, in a darker view, death acts as a punishment for their sins, as each character has severe moral failings.

If all is a plan, the plan is at the very least ambiguous — even with the best of human reason, can we ever decipher it?

The Tragedy of Choice

However, the narrative also provides a compelling argument that all is not preordained but rather the result of accident. It could be reasoned that random choices of the characters lead them to the bridge the moment it snaps; small changes in their lives could have easily averted the tragedy.

We see this, for example, with Esteban, who, when his twin brother unexpectedly dies, is thrown into turmoil over his choices — does he set sail with the captain of a ship for perilous adventures or carry on in the town shrouded with the memories of his brother?

His indecision ultimately leads him to the bridge one early morning in July. Was he meant to be there or was it merely an accident?

Looking back on his life and those of the other characters, one can see how they might end up on the bridge in the context of their lives. The real question is whether all of this was preordained or simply human fallibility.

Asking Questions, Withholding Answers

The best stories are often those that ask a question and then leave it there, floating across the pages, waiting for the reader to reach out and engage. The author provides the question, not necessarily the answer. Though many readers will find it frustrating that Wilder leaves us with no conclusion, it is this very lack of an answer that makes the story so enthralling.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a philosophical experiment that provides no answers, it simply presents us with the lives of the characters. Perhaps the real conclusion is that it is not necessary to know why these people died. Perhaps some things are simply not understandable, even when equipped with human reason.

Near the end of the book, we are told that, in a further attempt to answer his question, Brother Juniper studies the victims of a plague in a nearby village. He tries to study the lives of those who died, neatly creating a chart plotting the “Goodness,” “Piety,” and “Usefulness” of each person and allocating each a score. His results were distressing:

“He added up the total for victims and compared it with the total for survivors, to discover that the dead were five times more worth saving. It almost looked as though the pestilence had been directed against the really valuable people in the village of Puerto.”

And his reaction?

“He tore up his findings and cast them into the waves.”

Brother Juniper was unable to comprehend what he found; human reason did not assist him. He gave up. But rather than see this as a failure, his decision appears more of a choice — he chooses not to dwell over that which he cannot understand. In tearing up his findings he accepts that there are some things in the world that human logic will not be able to access. He continues to live, and he leaves the question suspended in the pages of the book.

“Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”

Meaning

While the story does not provide us an answer on whether we have fate or free will, it does leave us a lesson, one that we may have ignored. In our pursuit for knowledge, we missed the core of each character’s story: love. Whether our lives are conducted by a divine plan or the result of our own choices, it is what we leave behind that matters, the connections we make that will endure long after our deaths. Love continues to exist despite us ceasing to exist. We are connected to all that has come before us and to those that will come after us in our mutual, human experience of love, which is, Wilder tells us, the true meaning of the lives of the characters and of ours:

“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for awhile and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

This article was inspired by my reading of The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

“That city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things in the same way.”

Who penned these words? Many may be tempted to say Marx, but these sentiments actually belong to Plato.

I was surprised at his socialist leanings; however, a quick skim through Plato’s Republic proves that this idea was not an anomaly. Socialist ideology dominated much of Plato’s thinking, as it did for many of the ancients. A few other edicts that stand out in The Republic include:

“They possess nothing in private possession but their bodies, all else is held in common.”

“These women shall all be common to all these men.”

“Parents ought not to know their children.”

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Pillars of Socialism

A closer look at the socialism of the ancients is how Igor Shafarevich begins his monumental study, The Socialist Phenomenon. The book traces the history of socialism, beginning in antiquity, and sets out to prove that socialism is a consistent phenomenon, stretching across cultures and epochs.

Shafarevich shows that socialism is present in societies that are often little related to each other or occupy distant time periods. This suggests that there exists something in socialism that appeals to the human condition. As David Koigen, a Ukrainian philosopher, remarked, “Socialism is as old as human society itself – but not older.”

To identify historical moments characterized by socialism , Shafarevich defines four essential tenants of the ideology. These include:

1. Abolition of private property

This is part of every socialist ideology and the basic feature of all socialist states. Doctrines often promote the communality of property while socialist states are often based on state property.

2. Abolition of the family

While socialist doctrines may not explicitly promote the abolition of the family — though some do — there is a de-emphasis on the role of the family and an effort to weaken family ties, often with the express purpose of promoting closer ties to the state or the community.

3. Abolition of religion

In socialist states, the abolition of religion is rarely codified; however, states are governed on this principle and doctrines often take a hostile attitude towards spiritual practices.

4. Communality or Equality

The most common vocabulary employed by socialist doctrines is that which encompasses communality and/or equality. All ideology is aimed at destroying the hierarchy — though many are apt to point out that hierarchy often, ironically, still occurs in socialist states. This is also expressed in a hostility towards culture as an outlet for intellectual inequality.

Socialism of the Heretics

Moving into the Middle Ages, socialism manifests itself frequently in the heretical sects of Christianity. These groups rejected the teachings of the Catholic Church, often expressing not just a mere difference of interpretation but, in fact, an intense hatred for the Church itself.

One such example was the Cathars. This group believed in a dualistic world: one physical and one spiritual. The physical world was the source of evil, and thus proved the existence of an “evil God”, while the spiritual world was the source of goodness, a product of the “good God.” One of their most important beliefs was that of universal suicide; since evil was the driving force of the physical world, it was essential to refrain from bearing children and thus continuing the propagation of the species. Other facets of the movement included renouncing marriage and private property.

Another example was the Brethren of the Free Spirits. This movement believed in the ability of man to achieve a state of Godliness, since, they argued, our souls contain something of a divine substance. Members were required to renounce all property and family ties. They also believed that they were liberated from any kind of moral constraints on earth. Ultimately, it was through such practices that all hierarchy, both on earth and in heaven, would be eliminated.

In a striking parallel to Marx’s theory of history, Joachim of Flore, a member of the Free Spirits movement, preached that history was divided into three eras: the first was an age of slavish submission, the second an age of filial obedience, and the third an age of freedom. It was during this third age that humanity would reach its peak, consisting of the humble and poor who would not know the existence of private property.

A sampling of ideas from other heretical groups highlights how socialist ideals were promulgated across the Middle Ages.

The Taborites preached:

“The lofty and powerful must be bent down like tree branches and cut off and burned in furnaces like straw, leaving neither root nor branch, they must be thrashed like sheaves of grain, their blood drained to the last drop, they are to be exterminated with the scorpions, serpents and wild beasts, and put to death everywhere.”

The Anabaptists, which eventually would give rise to the modern Baptist denomination, would assert:

“For the godless have no right to live except when the Chosen give their permission.”

And

“The poorest among us, who earlier were scorned as paupers, now wear rich clothing like the highest and noblest. The poor have become, by God’s grace, as rich as burgomasters.”

Gerrard Winstanley, part of the heretical group the Diggers, which were active during the middle of the 1600s, wrote:

“And that this civil property is the curse is manifest thus: those that buy and sell land, and are landlords, have got it either by oppression or murder or theft; and all landlords live in the breach of the 7th and 8th commandments, ‘Thou shalt not steal nor kill.’”

And

“The cursed thing, called private property, which is the cause of all wars, bloodshed, theft and enslaving wars, that hold the people under misery.”

The Rise of Marxism

After the English Revolution, socialism began to take on a new form. It became disconnected from religion and, rather, became essentially tied to science. Much of this alteration is owed to the Enlightenment. People started to advocate for a belief in science, the knowability of all things, and, most importantly, in man. A new kind of socialism emerged, one which interpreted the world not through the lens of religion but rather through the perfectibility of man. Socialism began to deify man and man’s labor. Moreover, socialists argued that such a perspective could be readily concluded through an objective study of history.

The best example of this is seen in Marxism, which argues that socialism is a specific phase in human development. Marx argued that this could be deduced by scientific analysis, and its success ultimately stems from its appeal to science and objectivity. Marxism, Shafarevich argues, is successful because it claims to answer two important questions: Where to seek the chosen people? The proletariat. And, what is the supreme authority sanctioning the movement? Science.

However, if Marxism is truly scientific, it, like all branches of science, should follow the scientific method to verify its claims. And it is here, Shafarevich points out, that Marxism proves itself to be antithetical to science — rather than the objective pursuit of truth, Marxism begins with a certain standpoint and sets out to prove this through specific examples. By claiming to be a result of scientific research, Marxism gained the appearance — important during the 19th century and its obsession with the scientific method — of objectivity and inevitability.

Although Marxism attempts to pass as a scientific concept, it lacks one of the essential components: a definition free of contradictions. How, Shafarevich considers, can an ideology both strive to eliminate the suffering of future generations and achieve lasting happiness for humanity while being indifferent to the current, actual sufferings of people? Indeed, many 20th century socialists actually advocated for making life worse for the people — Lenin, for example, encouraged both famine and war — in order to drive people into such despair that they would beg for a socialist system.

Shafarevich argues that such cognitive dissonance is hardly plausible:

“We are asked to believe that man can be indifferent to the suffering of those around him and at the same time devote his life to the happiness of a future world he will not see.”

Marx and Engels showed no interest in alleviating the terrible working conditions of the 19th century, though they would try to convince us that they care deeply about the working conditions of theoretical workers in the future. In reality, Shafarevich reminds us, the significant achievements in social justice in the last century, including the improvement of conditions for the worker, were accomplished with very little participation from socialist movements.

In many ways, socialism defines itself as the quest for social justice. If socialism was, however, a way to achieve social justice, we should see numerous confirmations of this both within socialist states and, at the very least, in the doctrines themselves. We should see compassion for those experiencing injustice and attempts to remedy this; however, it is often the exact opposite. Remedying current suffering is set aside until the socialist ideal can be achieved, and attempts to improve present life are often condemned as preventing the socialist victory. This is evidenced in Lenin’s hostility to famine relief or in the Cathars’ forbiddance of charity.

Though socialism is often seen as the antithesis to capitalism, this depiction lacks an important distinction: unlike capitalism, socialism is not just an economic theory but also an ideology. As Shafarevich points out, there does not exist “capitalist parties” or “capitalist doctrines” as there does socialist parties and socialist doctrines. Socialism is a world view, comprising of, explaining, and influencing numerous aspects of life; in this way, it is not surprising that socialism has often been compared to religion in its scope and fervor.

Escaping the Yawning Abyss

Shafarevich concludes his study with what he believes to be socialism’s main goal: the suppression of individuality. The French modernist thinker Sartre described this aim perfectly:

“I always considered group thinking to be better than thinking alone… I don’t believe a separate individual to be capable of doing anything.”

Socialism seeks to commit violence against the self, to subjugate it to party or ideology. Bolshevik Communism would proclaim:

“This sort of violence against the self is acutely painful, but such violence with the aim of breaking oneself so as to be in fully accord with the party constitutes the essence of a truly principled Bolshevik Communist.”

Socialism aims to reduce humanity to its most primitive levels; it seeks to make man into no more than part of a social group. It is, essentially, anti-human. Socialist leaders have often used language that suggests the people are merely part of a machine: Stalin called Soviet Union citizens “nuts and bolts,” Mao referred to the “stainless-steel cog” of society. Man has no purpose, use, or identity as a single individual; rather, he is defined only as part of a class. This is why socialism often seeks to destroy the aspects of life that support and strengthen human individuality, namely in religion, culture, family and individual property.

Shafarevich lived in the Soviet Union — he witnessed one of the darkest manifestations of socialism. Despite this, he leaves us with a poignant and optimistic declaration for mankind:

There is no doubt that if the ideals of Utopia are realized universally, mankind … shall find the strength to regain its freedom and to preserve God’s image and likeness – human individuality – once it has glanced into the yawning abyss.

This article was inspired by my reading of The Socialist Phenomenon by Igor Shafarevich.

Below are recommended books that are mentioned in the post or provide great additional insight into the topic.

“I advise everyone who is able and has many wagons to make his way to that same wood where I cut these posts, and gather more for himself and load up his wagons with fine timbers, so that he may weave many elegant walls, and establish many a noble house, and build a fine homestead and there dwell in happiness and peace both summer and winter.”

- Alfred the Great

While the seasons continue to mark moments in our lives, they lack the gravity they once held in Anglo-Saxon England. The Anglo-Saxons, swept up in the whims of the weather, were connected to nature in a way we are not. The seasons defined the cycle of their lives: when to farm, when to harvest, when to celebrate and when to suffer.

Much of what we know about the age of the Anglo-Saxons comes from a few key sources. The Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, for example, wrote De temporum ratione (“The Reckoning of Time”) which provides much of what we know about the medieval year. Although Bede’s knowledge regarding the structure of the year often appears to be speculation, there is great fun in considering his interpretation of the names of months: February, “Solmōnaþ,” translates to “month of cakes,” May is “þrimilcemōnaþ” because “cattle were milked three times a day” and August is “Weodmonað” or “month of weeds.”

The Anglo-Saxons believed, like many of their Catholic counterparts on the continent, that studying the world around them would bring them closer to God. Particular attention to the ocean, land, and seasons would reveal profound truths about the nature of the universe. The world described by Anglo-Saxons is a direct attempt to understand these divine truths, laid out in a poetic verse and prose that speaks to our common humanity.

“It has always been my delight to learn or to teach or to write.”

- Bede, Historia ecclesiastica

This understanding of the world was fundamentally shaped by the Anglo-Saxons’ unique religious syncretism of Christianity and paganism. When Christianity was introduced to Britain, Pope Gregory encouraged missionaries to allow certain aspects of paganism to remain active in Anglo-Saxon life, believing that this would make the conversion process easier to implement. It appears that much of this conversion was readily accepted. Bede reports how an Anglo-Saxon counselor to the King once suggested:

“This life of men appears for a brief moment; what went before, or what will come after, we do not know at all. If, therefore, this new teaching offers something more certain, it seems worthy to be followed.”

It was almost as if their lives had been wrapped in a continual winter; the Anglo-Saxons saw Christianity as an opportunity to bring the light of knowledge to their uncertainty about the universe.

To understand both this religious conversion and how it was expressed in the Anglo-Saxon conscious, we must recall the unique fears that shaped the world of the early Middle Ages. Life was quite literally defined by the seasons; people regularly feared the pain of hunger, the darkness and chill of winter, and the invasions that inevitably came with spring.

With all of these difficulties in mind, it is understandable why it was common practice to refer to one’s age by how many winters one had lived in the world — how many years had you survived through the dangers of winter?

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Poetic Musings : “From winter into winter”

Perhaps the most obvious difference between our relationship with the seasons and that of the Anglo-Saxons is seen in winter. Winter posed great challenges; with it came frost, snow, ice, hunger, and darkness. It overpowered humans, and all they could do was wait. As Eleanor Parker describes in Winters in the World, much of the imagery of winter is that of it “imprisoning or chaining” the earth: “As earth is trapped by winter, so are human beings.”

“The Wanderer,” a poem found in the 10th c. Exeter Book, is my favorite depiction of the Anglo-Saxon winter. The poem describes a warrior roaming the earth after losing his home and family. He is facing winter — both the literal winter and a metaphorical darkness and dearth — alone. He describes:

“… I buried my lord / in the darkness of the earth, and from there / journeyed, winter-sorrowful, over the binding waves …”

Perhaps more disturbing, “The Wanderer” describes a world that has been plummeted into a continual winter: darkness has spread across the land, death and devastation reign, and all that has once brought joy has been reduced to rubble. He laments:

“The wise hero must perceive how terrible it will be / when all this world’s wealth lies waste, / as now in various places throughout this earth / walls stand blown by the wind, / covered with frost, buildings now-swept. / The halls decay, the ruler lies / deprived of all joys, the troop all dead … / Thus the Creator of men destroyed this dwelling place, / until, deprived of its citizens’ revelry, / the ancient work of giants stood empty.”

Surrounded by the ruins of Roman occupation, Anglo-Saxons were contemplative of the rise and fall of civilizations. They had a profound sense of the cyclical nature of time: though life may now be pleasant, a day will arrive when we too will become merely the ruins of civilization. Despite this dark prophecy, the wanderer urges us to accept these sufferings, as they will also provide great personal growth:

“and so a man cannot grow wise before he has had / his share of winters in the world.”

The Anglo-Saxons’ relationship with the world is best expressed in their poetry; it reveals their fears, values, hopes, and history. Because winter, like many seasons, brought such dramatic changes to the daily lives of Anglo-Saxons, it is only natural that they would attempt to understand these transformations by seeing parallels in their own lives.

“The Wanderer” remains relevant across the centuries. It was, for example, a large inspiration for Tolkien in writing The Lord of the Rings. In fact, Tolkien used many themes of and references to Anglo-Saxon poetry in his sweeping saga. This is likely because much of Anglo-Saxon poetry still speaks to very real human emotions, as we may have once underwent similar challenges, just as our ancestors did many years ago.

The full text of “The Wanderer” can be found at the Old English Poetry Project.

This article was inspired by my reading of Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year by Eleanor Parker.

Below are recommended books that are mentioned in the post or provide great additional insight into the topic.