The Gulag Archipelago was one of the most influential books of my life. I was pretty left leaning when the book was first published and curiosity motivated me back then to purchase it. It destroyed any illusion I had about any moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and this country, and likewise our political systems. On the heels of reading the Gulag (the first of the three volumes), I watched the horrific events in Cambodia and the Cultural Revolution in China. I realized then that American leftists were flirting with an evil ideology. With the egalitarian ‘makeup’ washed off its face, one can see communism (and I pretty much regard socialists as closet communists) for the vicious, totalitarian monster it really is, and then it’s utopian siren song no longer sounds so sweet.
Are the other two volumes available?
I want to read them all.