The Gulag Archipelago (1973) is one of those rare works of history that has proven its weight in gold. In my personal view, it is in a class of work that includes Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work Democracy in America (1835), Civilization or Barbarism by Cheikh Anta Diop. (1991), Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1999), and The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1965).
Now I am aware that nitpickers will nitpick my selections. Some will suggest that maybe the Moynihan Report is too short, or that Diop’s challenge of the idea that civilization originated exclusively in Europe or the Near East, using linguistics, archaeology, physical anthropology, historical texts, and cultural analysis, is too controversial. Likewise, others may ask how dare I include a book that some would say validates colonialism and racism, given that Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, seeks to explain why some societies came to dominate others, not through racial or biological superiority, but through geography, environment, and historical contingency. Simply for attempting to answer the question: Why did Europeans conquer much of the world, rather than Africans, Native Americans, or Australians conquering Europe?
Equally, others may point I should have selected other text. I agree and have others, but of what I have read, these were the first to come to mind. I will look up a free PDF to provide a link, but I cannot waste time looking over my bookshelves to find titles to impress mutha fucas I don’t know.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago is a monumental work that exposes the Soviet Union’s system of forced labor camps, known as the Gulag.
The book traces the arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, and degradation of millions of people under the Soviet regime from the Lenin era through Stalin’s rule. Rather than a conventional history, it is a hybrid of memoir, investigative reporting, and moral philosophy, drawing on Solzhenitsyn’s own imprisonment and the testimonies of more than 200 former prisoners. Solzhenitsyn describes how ordinary citizens (workers, soldiers, intellectuals, and party members) were swept into the Gulag through arbitrary accusations, coerced confessions, and show trials. He details the brutal realities of camp life: starvation, extreme cold, exhausting labor, beatings, informants, and the constant psychological pressure to betray others to survive.
Beyond documenting suffering, the book examines how totalitarian systems corrupt moral responsibility. Solzhenitsyn argues that evil is not confined to dictators or secret police but is enabled by widespread fear, obedience, and moral compromise throughout society. One of the book’s central themes is that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart, including those of victims and perpetrators alike.
When published in the West, The Gulag Archipelago shattered many illusions about Soviet communism, profoundly influencing Cold War thought and human rights discourse. It is widely regarded as one of the most important books of the 20th century for its role in exposing state terror and defending moral truth against ideological denial. It may be equally useful today to prepare oneself for what to expect under the new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, and his hand-picked comrades, who are often described as socialist political zombies.
2026 in America begins with a communist being sworn in as mayor of New York on a Koran. At his inauguration, Mayor Zohran Mamdani committed to supplanting what he called “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” I take this more than word play, but rather his genuine position on how to run government, and it isn’t very comforting.
There is a word that we all have that means the warmth of collectivism, and it is Communism. So, taking Mandami at his word, his goal is to replace the fragility of individualism with the warmth of communitarianism. He has made it clear that he desires to give voice to just how radical his intentions are. That means communist confiscation of private property by taxing private properties and taxing unrealized gains, so it is not affordable for the city government to strip away your private property.
Collectivism is the social, political, and philosophical idea that the group, rather than the individual, is the primary unit of value and responsibility. Its origins are ancient, but collectivism took its modern ideological form in the 19th century. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that private property and individual competition alienate humans from their communal nature. They promoted collective ownership of the means of production. This philosophy later shaped the Soviet Union, Maoist China under Mao Zedong, and assorted socialist and nationalist movements worldwide.
Under Vladimir Lenin, early socialist collectivization led to the rapid central control of production and the elimination of private property. The results are well documented. From 1921-1922, grain requisitioning and bans on private trade collapsed agriculture, killing around 5 million people due to mass famine. To rule, violence and force were required. The Cheka conducted executions, hostage-taking, and mass arrests against peasants, clergy, and political opponents.
Independent unions, parties, and press were eliminated; dissent equated with treason, and uprisings (Tambov Rebellion) were suppressed with chemical weapons and mass reprisals. Thus, for collectivism to function, it had to be enforced through violence, which led to economic collapse and widespread death.
Under Joseph Stalin, forced collectivization and totalitarian state control resulted in absolute collectivist control of agriculture, labor, and thought. Private farms abolished; peasants herded into state-run collectives. Grain seizures continued even during crop failure. The Holodomor alone killed between 3 and 5 million, with total famine deaths across the USSR being around 8 million.
Millions labeled “kulaks” (often ordinary peasants), deported, imprisoned, or executed. In addition, tens of millions passed through forced-labor camps (Gulag labor camps), where millions died from starvation, exposure, and overwork. During the Great Terror (1936–1938), mass executions, show trials, and purges of party members, military officers, intellectuals, and civilians were practiced to maintain total psychological control. The net result of collectivism was a system of mass coercion, producing unprecedented peacetime death tolls and long-term societal trauma.
This is what one can anticipate if what he desires to do is accomplished. Mamdani was elected by a significant block of envious twits who hate their country. People don’t realize that, no matter how bad it gets, they are happy about any destruction to the US/West, and are too spiteful and vengeful to care about declining living standards. They love destroying as much as we love building – and it is easier to accomplish. Which is why they and Mandami are the perfect example of thinking you are far more intelligent than you actually are.
It isn’t enough that an Islamic Socialist rules what’s supposed to be our best city; the folks he has selected thus far are something out of a dime store weekly. Looking behind door number 1, we have Cea Weaver, Mamdani’s newly instated radical-left tenant advocate.
The 37-year-old Weaver, who has described homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy,” and advocated for seizing “private property,” in 2021, stated that families “who are homeowners are, well, are gonna have a different relationship to property than the one we currently have.” She is certainly a certified loon and equally out of touch with reality. When questioned about her mother owning a million-dollar mansion in Tennessee, she started to cry, according to multiple reports. Watching Weaver talk on videos, even on mute, made my ears hurt. This lady is an actual racist communist lefty revolutionary in the flesh in charge of the housing department in America’s biggest city!
If this is not a sign of the future political orientation of the city, Mamdani has appointed Ramzi Kassem, who defended al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi in court, as the city’s top attorney. All I can say is bend over New Yorkers, and get ready to embrace food lines, poverty, violence, and bloodshed that ‘collectivism’ always brings with it.
Collectivism is a cancer. True oppression begins when you judge people as part of groups instead of as individuals. The Constitution exists to limit the power of society over man. That is the foundation of America, and we must preserve that notion over everything else.
Sadly, the people of New York will have to wait until they see what free costs, and how their city goes to hell. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give anyone anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. So good luck with that.
