Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir
"A unique text in the tradition owing to its author's role in the camp bureaucracy...The value of Mochulsky's memoir is in the peculiar viewpoint of a man who did not seek employment in the Gulag, but who nevertheless had to work within it.  It provides an illuminating portrait of how the middle ranks of the system had to deal with the often fantastic demands from Moscow." --Slavic and East European Journal"This is a fascinating memoir, presenting for the first time the voice of a "gulag boss." It offers a devastating counterpoint to the existing picture of Stalin's gulag that we have from victims' memoirs. The discovery and superb translation of this memoir by Deborah Kaple represents a major contribution to Gulag studies." -Lynne Viola, author ofThe Unknown Gulag: The Secret World of Stalin's Special Settlements"Many memoirs by people who lived under the Stalinist regime in the USSR have appeared, but few give any real sense of how the repressive apparatus functioned. Fyodor Mochulsky's memoir offers the perspective of a Gulag prison camp official who, despite being a committed Communist, was able to sense a disjuncture between his expectations and the terrible reality he confronted. Although Mochulsky's memoir is necessarily selective and was written with the benefit of hindsight, it gives a valuable sense of some of the things he felt and the dilemmas he faced while overseeing Gulag operations. The memoir undoubtedly leaves out the worst aspects of Mochulsky's job, but he does not pretend to have been a hero or a closet dissident. If only inadvertently, his account lays bare the evils of the system he loyally served." -Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University"Gulag Boss provides a unique and fascinating insight into the mind and morality of the men who ran the Soviet concentration camps."--Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofGulag: A History"A fascinating memoir" -American Thinker"This unique viewpoint on the harsh Stalinist prison system is an important historical document" -NY Post"Essential reading ... I could hardly put it down." - Simon Sebag Montefiore,Literary Review"The twisted, uncomfortable brilliance of the book, both as a historical document and as a piece of literature, however dry: by reducing the sprawling, all-consuming horror of the Gulag to a series of small concerns and logistical hurdles, Mochulsky shows how an entire system built around the notion of capricious cruelty could function for so long." -The New Republic