**The Gulag Archipelago ABRIDGED** **Chapter 11 - The Supreme Measure: https://files.catbox.moe/ug4zk6.mp3** I give my apologies to the no doubt often mispronounced Russian names and places. Additional apologies for sometimes mispronounced English words… This Chapter: *The meat grinder keeping us honest:* >>And what kind of evildoers were these condemned men? Where did so many plotters and troublemakers come from? Among them, for example, were six collective farmers from nearby Tsarskoye Selo who were guilty of the following crime: After they had finished mowing the collective farm with their own hands, they had gone back and mowed a second time along the hummocks to get a little hay for their own cows. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee refused to pardon all six of these peasants, and the sentence of execution was carried out. >>As for the executions of 1937–1938, what legal expert, what criminal historian, will provide us with verified statistics? Where is that Special Archive we might be able to penetrate in order to read the figures? There is none. There is none and there never will be any. Therefore we dare report only those figures mentioned in rumors that were quite fresh in 1939–1940, when they were drifting around under the Butyrki arches, having emanated from the high-and middle-ranking Yezhov men of the NKVD who had been arrested and had passed through those cells not long before. (And they really knew!) The Yezhov men said that during those two years of 1937 and 1938 a half-million “political prisoners” had been shot throughout the Soviet Union, and 480,000 blatnye—habitual thieves—in addition. According to the testimony from Krasnodar, in 1937–1938 in the main building of the GPU on Proletarskaya Street they shot more than two hundred people every night. >>Thus many were shot—thousands at first, then hundreds of thousands. We divide, we multiply, we sigh, we curse. But still and all, these are just numbers. They overwhelm the mind and then are easily forgotten. *Rabbits:* >>And almost always a person obediently allows himself to be killed. Why is it that the death penalty has such a hypnotic effect? Those pardoned recall hardly anyone in their cell who offered any resistance. Why you should know this book: - You probably went through public school like me, so this urgently important part of history was not taught to you. - This book is 1984 before 1984 was written (it’s also nonfiction). - The powers perpetrating mass incarceration and murder throughout this book are still in power today. Why Abridged? - If you don't have an intimate relationship with Russian history, you will be lost most of the time. - The full audio version is about an 80 hour adventure of dry listening. Difficult even for an audiobook. I suspect this abridged version will be fewer than 40 when I am finished. - This was written for a western audience (that's probably you). **Previous Chapters:** Introduction: https://files.catbox.moe/73kxit.mp3 Chapter 01 - Arrest: https://files.catbox.moe/ep8du7.mp3 Chapter 02 - The History of Our Sewage Disposal System: https://files.catbox.moe/3y8hwv.mp3 Chapter 03 - The Interrogation: https://files.catbox.moe/agp3dl.mp3 Chapter 04 – The Bluecaps: https://files.catbox.moe/takv7w.mp3 Chapter 05 – First Cell, First Love: https://files.catbox.moe/xd1u3r.mp3 Chapter 06 – That Spring: https://files.catbox.moe/12a1lm.mp3 Chapter 07 – In the Engine Room: https://files.catbox.moe/zej3kp.mp3 Chapter 08 - The Law as a Child: https://files.catbox.moe/qhyhws.mp3 Chapter 09 - The Law Becomes a Man: https://files.catbox.moe/cw5kat.mp3 Chapter 10 - The Law Matures: https://files.catbox.moe/m2z2dx.mp3