The Gulag Archipelago: Difference between revisions

* [[Cold Blooded Torture]]: Various forms of this were employed as interrogation techniques, though it was noted with irony the best methods tended to be prolonged sleeplessness, though this took the longest to actually achieve in practice.

* [[Doorstopper]]: It is very large book, normally published in three heavy volumes.

* [[Footnote Fever]]: Some pages have footnotes almost as long as the pages themselves, and a lot of Solzhenitsyn's [[Deadpan Snarker]] commentary can be found in them.

* [[Holier Than Thou|More Communist Than Thou]]: many of the Communist prisoners being purged still think themselves loyal to Stalin's regime, convinced that it was all a mistake that they were arrested, whereas everybody around them are of course scum and deserve every moment of their sentence. Solzhenitsyn distinguishes between them and the true socialists who carried their beliefs in their hearts and not on their sleeves--and were arrested because of it.

* [[The Informant]]: ''stoolies'', as they were called, were universally despised by prisoners and the security services alike. In many cases they didn't have a choice when they were recruited; Solzhenitsyn himself was forced to become an informant. He considered himself very fortunate to have been transferred out to a ''sharashka'' before internal security could really pressure him into snitching on overheard conversations.

* [[No Except Yes]]: In a rather [[Insane Troll Logic]] fashion, this was used to reintroduce executions after Lenin had abolished them when it came time to have a guy shot for treason. When it was pointed out executions were abolished, the response to that was:

{{quote|'''"What are you worrying about? Executions have been abolished. But Shchastny is not being executed; he is being shot."'''}}

 

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