Book Review
![handle is hein.journals/armylaw2006 and id is 427 raw text is: Book Review
GULAG: A HISTORY'
MAJOR WILLIAM J. DOBOSH, JR.2
The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of
arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law.3
In June 2005, Amnesty International's scathing comparison of a U.S. military detention center to the Gulag drew the ire
of several political commentators4 and revived an ominous word from the lexicon of the Soviet Union. Gulag5 refers to the
vast network of Soviet prison labor camps that began under Vladimir Lenin6 and continued until the Soviet Union dissolved
in the 1990s.7 In light of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism (GWOT),8 U.S. military detention centers for enemy
combatants could expand. Because increasing numbers of commanders may seek advice on detention operations, judge
advocates should study detention center issues and develop the ability to contend with any associated international criticism.9
Contending with Amnesty International's criticism must begin with an account of the Gulag, such as Anne Applebaum's
award-winning Gulag. A History. In Gulag, Applebaum provides general readers' a survey of the social, cultural, and
political framework of the Gulag camps12 and illuminates the Gulag's memorable human drama. Applebaum extensively
researched her account,13 and her impressive array of sources includes government archives, interviews, personal memoirs
and earlier, more defmitive works on the Gulag.14 In key sections of the work, however, Applebaum avoids using the
ANNE APPLEBAUM, GULAG: A HISTORY (2003).
2 U.S. Army. Written while assigned as a student, 54th Graduate Course, The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School (TJAGLCS), U.S. Army,
Charlottesville, Virginia. I appreciate the efforts of Major Sean Watts, Professor, International and Operational Law Department, TJAGLCS, and Ms.
Tahseen F. Ali, Esq., who contributed insightful editorial comments during pre-publication rewrites of this review.
3 IRENE KHAN, Foreword to ANNUAL REPORT OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL (2005), available at http://web/amnesty.org/report2005/message-eng.
4 See, e.g., Neil Cavuto, Does Gitmo Matter?, FOXNEWS.COM, June 14,2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,159571,00.html (fearing that (w]e're
more inclined to look after the needs of those who hate us [i.e., prisoners in Guantanamo Bay] than to consider for a moment [victims of September I Ith
terrorist incidents]); James S. Robbins, Got Gulag? North Korea Does, NAT'L REV. ONLINE, June 9, 2005,
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200506090745.asp (blasting the reference both for its fallaciousness, and the implicit trivializing of the
Soviet Gulag system in which tens of millions were imprisoned and uncountable numbers died); Cathy Young, A Long Way from the Gulag, BOSTON
GLOBE, June 6, 2005, at A13 (calling the Amnesty International comment a broadside that goes so far in the other direction).
5 GULAG was initially an acronym for glavnoe upravlenie lagerei, which means Main Camp Administration. APPLEBAUM, supra note 1, at 50
(emphasis added). It referred to the department of the Soviet secret police responsible for managing the prison labor camps, id., and later to the system of
Soviet concentration camps generally. Id. at xxv.
6 Id. at 8-9.
Id. at 562.
During the summer of 2005, Department of Defense officials sometimes referred to the GWOT as the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. See,
e.g., Tom Regan, The 'Rebranding'of the War on Terror, CHRISTIAN SC. MONITOR, July 28, 2005, http://www.csmoniotr.com/2005/0728/daily/Update.
html.
9 See Lieutenant Colonel Paul Kantwill, Foreword, ARMY LAW., July 2005, at 1 (stating that international and operational law has become a core
competency of all military attorneys).
1o Gulag won both the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and Britain's Duff-Cooper Prize. AnneApplebaum.com, Bio, http://www.anneapplebaum.comf
bio.html (last visited Mar. 20, 2006) [hereinafter Applebaum Bio].
1 Applebaum defines a general reader as a reader who lacks any specialized knowledge of Soviet history. APPLEBAUM, supra note 1, at xxvi.
12 Id. at xviii, xxiii.
13 Her bibliography includes twenty-nine interviews, id. at 653-54, during which Applebaum's Russian language skills clearly paid huge dividends. As one
reviewer noted, she dearly spent hundreds of hours listening to former prisoners, former guards, and local researchers throughout the former Soviet Union.
Lawrence Uzell, Remembering the Gulag; Gulag: A History, FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY J. ON RELIGION & PUB. LIFE (Nov. 1,2003) (book review). The
depth of these accounts gives Gulag an unforgettable personal flavor. The book also gains considerable authenticity from Applebaum's access to previously
sealed archival materials concerning the Gulag. APPLEBAUM, supra note 1, at 565 ([T]his book itself is testimony to the abundance of newly available
[archival] information.).
14 See, e.g., id. at 88-89 (quoting VARLAM SHAMALOV, KOLYMA TALES 369 (John Glad trans., Penguin Books 3d ed. 1994) (1980)) (Kalamov's description
of camp life in the Berzin era); id. at 362-63 (quoting 2 ALEKSANDR I. SOLZHENITSYN, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, 1918-1956: AN EXPERIMENT IN
LITERARY INVESTIGATION 252-54 (Thomas P. Whitney trans., 1973)) (Solzhenitsyn's discussion of trusties, prisoners who collaborated with camp
authorities); Steven Merritt Miner, The Other Killing Machine, N.Y. TIMES, May 11, 2003, sec. 7, at II (book review) ([A] great deal of what Applebaum
writes about... has been told before.).
APRIL 2006 THE ARMY LAWYER DA PAM 27-50-395](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/armylaw2006&div=41&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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