Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps Hardcover – May 18, 1978

The worst is the auto-rotate. If it's on the page will show vertically but you can't turn it off while the book is open so you turn it off and reopen the book and it's horizontal again.Also because it a bunch of scans it took forever to download and the font obviously can't be enlarged.If I can figure out how. I'll return it for a refund, but it can't be read as is. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. I'm going to see if I can find it in a real book but it's likely out of print.

I consider this a "mandatory" book for anyone who is interested in the history of the Soviet Union in the modern era. A common element in totalitarian regimes is the elimination of actual or perceived "enemies of the state". The Soviets took this one step further and engaged in a reign of terror during the 1930's which resulted in many "convicted" victims being transported to Kolyma to work in the gold mines or at cutting timber. Few returned. Death from disease, starvation, freezing and abuse were common occurrences. In effect, being deported (exiled) to Kolyma was a death sentence. This is a difficult read, to be sure, but it tells a story which has to be told. Some of the scenes recounted in Conquest's book still give me the chills.

This book is a tribute to the human spirit. Beaten, starved, deprived of all comforts, lacking security, exposed to one of the planet's harshest environments some survived. This account was drawn from survivors of Stalin's heinous, Siberian Gulag. It is incomprehensible how anyone was able to endure the 10 or 20 or more years of the nightmare that was Kolyma. Robert Conquest shares some of their incredible stories.

Feeling down? Read this, things could be worse.

Robert Conquest is a very special historian...he knows how to write really well and can teach at the same time. If you want to learn about the evil of Communism...read this book.

Robert Conquest's book KOLYMA:THE ARCITIC DEATH CAMPS is a well written history of the worst of the Soviet concentration camps. This book is not for the timid or weak minded. Yet Conquest's book is a solid antidote to the fawning nonsense that somehow the Soviet system was a benefit to the Russian people and Soviet citizens. This is a depressing, tragic account of "The Worker's Paradice," and is a shock to those who referred to Joseph Stalin as "Uncle Joe."Readers should be aware that the Soviet mass murder concentration camps DID NOT originate with Joseph Stalin & co. As soon as the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, Lenin & co. had a record of political murder that was only enhanced by the Stalinoids. Lenin had more political murders than all of the 19th and early 20th century Czars combined. The brutality of the Soviet system was clear by 1919, and the only thing that Stalin did was greatly enhance political murder and terror. In other words, what Lenin started, Stalin greatly enhanced in the Soviet police state.Conquest began his study of the Kolyma concentration camp by examining the "Gulag Archepelago" of concentration camps beginning in Western Siberia and extending to Kolyma in far Northeastern Siberia. The further east the camps were, the worse they were including Kolyma which was the worst of terrible concentration camp conditions.The mere transport of prisoners to Kolyma was a terrifying experience. The Soviet police had to send prisoners by ship into the Nothern Pacific Ocean and Artic Ocean. If prisoners protested their terrible conditions on board these ships, they would be sprayed with ocean water in frigid conditions. The lack of food, space, sanitation conditions, etc. insured that many prisoners died en route to a slow death of over work and starvation diets.Conquest did a good job in explaining the catagories of prisoners. Violent prisoners and those who were predators faired best. Conquest reported that violent offenders could not be executed because the Soviets abolished capital punishment for homicide prisoners. Yet, political dissenters and those who were suspected of not adhering to the party line could be executed (murdered) under Soviet "law." Needless to say the violent criminals ran the camps among prison groups.Conquest's history of Kolyma is interesting. Prior to 1937, prisoners got adequet food and clothing. The Soviet authorities wanted to exploit the fold reserves in this area, and properly fed and clothed prisoners would obviously be more productive. Howeverin 1937, this policy changed. The Soviet authorities wanted the prisoners to die of famine, exhaustion, and poor conditions. Rations were curtailed. In fact, there were just enough supplies for men and women to barely exist, and the concentration camp guards made sure they themselves were fed and provided before the prisoners were. There is an interesting anecdote whereby in bitter cold weather, inmates would be told to drop the wood in their coats before entering the camps to sleep. The inmates would only discard part of the wood for heating fuel which the guards used. The guards knew full well the inmates did not surrender all the wood they had, and the operation was just a police state formality.The casuality rates in the Soviet concentration camps were appalingly high. Serious estimates are that possibly over 20 million Soviet citizens died in these camps, and over one-tenth of the Soviet citizens were sent to these camps to be literally worked to death. The death rate at Kolyma was by far the worst. Over 80-90 percent of the inmates died. The Soviets sent over 12,000 Polish prisoners to Kolyma, and only 600 survived. Readers can do the math.A good companion volume is Robert Conquest's book titled HARVEST OF SORROW. The reviewer who uses the name Prometheus Zossimos wrote an impressive review of this book which readers should examine. For those of The Eastern Establishment who still cling to "leftest" ideologies, these books are a shock, but they are an important lesson when men profess heaven on earth.While KOLYMA: THE ARCTIC DEATH CAMPS is just the history of one remote Soviet concentration camp, the book is an excellent guide of results of unbridled power and blind submission to authority. During the Yalta Conference in 1945, Stalin boasted that his crushing of the Kulaks between 1928 and 1933 resulted in 17 million deaths. Someone should have had the effrontery to ask what the death rate was at Kolyma.

When asked if he would like to make any changes to his book, Conquest said that he would like to change the title. Somewhat startled, the publisher asked him what the new title would be. Conquest answered, "Call it, 'I Told You So, You F***ing Idiots." Well, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, and I hope that I am at a considerable distance when it happens.

How can this be a Kindle Unlimited selection when it is unreadable? The formatting, if it can be called that, is terrible. Whoever is responsible for this should be sent to the Kindle Kolyma. This review applies to all the Kindle Conquest titles.

I agree with earlier reviews. The Kindle version is unreadable. Not only do the pages autorotate incorrectly (the print is vertical when you try to read it in horizontal mode, and vice versa) but the pages are not in the correct order, and some are incomplete. Therefore it is a total waste of money and time. So DO NOT BUY THIS.It is an important book and should be read. So what a huge disappointment to find such rubbish and unworthy of Amazon.I will also try to get a refund although there are few clues about how this can be done. Why I wonder?