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Part 1, Chapter 10: The Law Matures
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Gulag Archipelago, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Oppression and Totalitarianism
Survival and the Human Spirit
The Dangers of Ideology
Power as a Corrupting Force
The Value of Religion and Spirituality
Summary
Analysis
Solzhenitsyn explores the history of capital punishment in Russia. In the late 19th century, executions remained rare, even during the revolutionary period. The death toll spiked during the 1905 Revolution, as the state reacted with an unprecedented wave of executions. The Provisional Government abolished capital punishment, but the Bolsheviks reversed this, ushering in a new era of mass executions beginning in 1918, where tens of thousands perished as the revolutionary regime sought to maintain power.
The escalation from rare executions in the 19th century to mass killings in the post-revolutionary era demonstrates the Bolsheviks' willingness to use extreme measures to consolidate power. Solzhenitsyn’s historical perspective reveals a regime that abandoned any pretense of justice, normalizing execution as a political tool.
Themes
Stalin’s purges of 1937-1938 intensified state violence, with hundreds of thousands executed in brutal waves. Despite occasional decrees that claimed to abolish the death penalty, Stalin reinstated it under new pretenses, maintaining a relentless cycle of terror. Solzhenitsyn describes the human cost of this systematic violence, emphasizing the widespread and indiscriminate nature of executions. He reflects on the deep emotional scars left on families, suggesting that commemorating the victims with photographs (which are provided in the book) could make their deaths more meaningful and unforgettable. He then ponders the passive, hypnotic effect of the death penalty, noting that most victims accepted their fates without resistance.
Solzhenitsyn’s emphasis on the sheer scale of executions and their psychological impact on families exposes the generational trauma that the state’s systemic violence inflicted. His suggestion to commemorate victims with photographs challenges the Soviet practice of erasing individual identities, aiming instead to preserve the memory of those lost. Solzhenitsyn’s observation about the hypnotic effect of the death penalty speaks to the numbing power of terror in a society conditioned to accept its authority without question.
Themes
