While Anne Applebaum's Gulag is an extensivebook, and in fact also quite engrossing, I do have some problems I would like to talk about. Sure, the communists were very intolerant and despised freedom of speech, and sent political dissidents to the Gulag system at the drop of a hat. Nobody denies that. But to compare the Soviet Union's Gulag system to the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in their concentration camp is unfair and does injustice to the millions of victims--Jews, gypsies, slavs, etc--who were murdered, maimed and tortured merely because of their ethnicity and nothing more. Such comparison should never ever be made. PERIOD. It is quite obvious that Anne Applebaum is towing the Republican party line by this inane comparison. They have this bad habit of asserting that the pinkos were as bad as the Nazis. These were NAZI policies and people died(killed most often than not) because of these policies. As for the Gulag, predominantly speaking it wasn't the Soviet Union's policies to treat the prisoners this way. Many of them were there because they actively denounced Stalinist communist policies. Of course, during Stalin's times this hysteria hit the ceiling and people were locked up for petty reasons. At its peak the Gulag camps held hundreds of thousands of prisoners, and Stalin viewed, wrongly mind you, prison labor as a source of productivity. So, enough prisoners were needed just to meet the unreachable demands set by the administrators. Thus the vicious cycle was initiated and the Soviet Union saw the need for more prisoners for increased productivity. Having said all this, most prisoners who died in the Gulag camps died due to neglect by the authorities. Of course, there WERE indeed cases where prisoners were shot and treated inhumanely, but in no way SHOULD this ever be compared to the crimes committed by the Nazi authorities. While one killed people because it was the policy of the administration, the other killed people due to neglect. The Soviet Union was in no shape or form a affluent like the United States, so what I find in Anne Applebaum's --in many ways--ethnocentric book is her constant comparison to what she considers to be standards for treating prisoners. I can bet my bottom dollar that Indian prisoners don't make life easy for prisoners either. What about Nepal's prison system? Beating up prisoners in Nepal is also not unheard of. So, all in all, the book is well researched, but many of her opinions are flawed and should be taken with a grain of salt. Having said all this, it is a great book, and the indisputable facts regarding the Gulag are indeed the reason why this book should be on your shelf.