**The Gulag Archipelago ABRIDGED** **Chapter 04 – The Bluecaps: https://files.catbox.moe/takv7w.mp3** I give my apologies to the no doubt often mispronounced Russian names and places. Additional apologies for sometimes mispronounced English words… **Fun quotes from Chapter 3:** *-Although others might not be aware of it, it was clear to the interrogators at least that the cases were fabricated. Except at staff conferences, they could not seriously say to one another or to themselves that they were exposing criminals. Nonetheless they kept right on producing depositions page after page to make sure that we rotted.* *-“Just give us a person—and we’ll create the case!” That was what many of them said jokingly, and it was their slogan. What we think of as torture they think of as good work.* *-There is just one thing you must never forget. You, too, would have been just such a poor block of wood if you had not had the luck to become one of the little links in the Organs—that flexible, unitary organism inhabiting a nation as a tapeworm inhabits a human body. Everything is yours now! Everything is for you! Just be true to the Organs! They will always stand up for you! They will help you swallow up anyone who bothers you! They will help move every obstacle from your path! But—be true to the Organs! Do everything they order you to! They will do the thinking for you in respect to your functions too.* *-And just so we don’t go around flaunting too proudly the white mantle of the just, let everyone ask himself: “If my life had turned out differently, might I myself not have become just such an executioner?” It is a dreadful question if one really answers it honestly.* *-If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.* *-Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. -We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the “weakness of indoctrinational work,” that they are growing up “indifferent.” Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.* Why you should listen: -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'll be lost most of the time. -The full audio version is about an 80 hour adventure of dry listening. I suspect this will be fewer than 40 when I am finished. -This was written for a western audience. **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