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BRITAIN'S GULAG Histories of the Hanged: Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. By DAVID ANDERSON. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005. Pp. viii+406 (ISBN 0-297-84719-8). Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. By CAROLINE ELKINS (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005). Pp. xiv+475. £20 (ISBN 0-224-07363-X).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2005

BETHWELL A. OGOT
Affiliation:
Moi University and Maseno University

Abstract

GULAG is the Russian acronym for the Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps made famous and permanently inscribed into the English vocabulary through the genius of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his classic, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, published in 1974. The author used the testimony of 227 survivors as well as recollections of his own 11 years of labour camps and exiles. The Archipelago of Solzhenitsyn's work is that system of secret police installations, camp prisons, transit centers, communication facilities, transport systems and espionage organizations which, in his view, was a state within a state holding about 15 million people. The book shows how ordinary people, who are referred to by their own names, can be turned into planners and executives of oppression, brutality and torture.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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