Once-banned book about gulags on the curriculum

MOSCOW - The book that made "gulag" a synonym for the horrors of Soviet oppression will be taught in Russian high schools, a generation after the Kremlin banned it as destructive to the Communist cause and exiled its author.

The Education Ministry said yesterday that excerpts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, published in 1973, are to be required reading for students.

Coming at a time when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is pushing to restore pride in the Soviet past, the decision could be a reflection of the Russian establishment's struggle to reconcile that pride with the freedoms that Russians take for granted nearly 20 years after dumping communism and embracing democracy and the free market.

After publication, The Gulag Archipelago circulated underground and soon reached the West in translation. A furious Kremlin expelled Solzhenitsyn from his native country in 1974, and he spent the next 20 years in the United States.

His three-volume book gave the outside world a detailed account of the systematic imprisonment and murder of hundreds of thousands of Russians in the nationwide "archipelago" of prisons and labour camps designed by Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin and expanded by Josef Stalin.

Solzhenitsyn drew on his own experiences in labour camps in the 1940s and those of hundreds of prisoners who survived the Main Department of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies - the Russian acronym is "Gulag".

Other books by Solzhenitsyn are taught in Russian schools, but choosing The Gulag Archipelago, one of the most explosive publishing events in Soviet history, seemed to go against the Kremlin's tendency towards treating Stalin's 24-year rule with nostalgia.

Human rights activists, however, were hesitant to call it a turnaround.

Lev Ponomaryov, who campaigns for Russia to repudiate Stalinism, said the Kremlin was worried that the popularity of the Communist Party is increasing at a time of economic crisis.

"The introduction of the books is a rather good way to decrease the popularity of the Communists among the young people," Ponomaryov said.

The Education Ministry stayed out of the debate, saying only that the decision was taken because of "the vital historical and cultural heritage" contained in the work.

But whatever the motive, Ponomaryov said, "the younger generation should know about the crimes of Bolshevism and Stalinism in Russia."

BRUTAL PRISON SYSTEM

HISTORY
The forced-labour camps were started by a decree of April 15, 1919. In 1930, under Josef Stalin, it became Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerey (Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps), known by its acronym, Gulag.

LOCATION
Gulag camps were mainly in remote regions of Siberia and the far north and east of the Soviet Union. INMATES Rich or resistant peasants arrested during the collectivisation of farms, purged military officers and Communist Party members, World War II prisoners, members of allegedly disloyal ethnic groups, suspected saboteurs and traitors, dissident intellectuals, ordinary criminals. Many inmates were innocent.

NUMBERS
The Gulag held five million prisoners by 1936. Its own figures show that 10 million people were sent to the camps between 1934 and 1947.

TYPE OF WORK
Mining, felling timber, building canals and railroads. Prisoners faced starvation or execution if they refused to work.

DEATHS
Western scholars estimate 15 to 30 million died between 1918 to 1956.

THE END
The Gulag started to shrink soon after Stalin's death in 1953. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were given amnesties. AP

- AP