A Literary-Historical Account of The Gulag Archipelago

Gulag
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University student Mathew Matt Kafker loves reading. One of the books Matt Kafker is reading in 2019 is “The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. 

The Gulag Archipelago is a historically vivid description of the horrors committed by the Soviet Union government on its own people held in labor camps following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 through all the way into Stalin’s rule. Gulag is an acronym for the Soviet Union’s governing agency for labor camps, while archipelago is a metaphor that aptly captures how these labor camps were spread out, like a chain of islands.

The book draws heavily from the experiences of the author, himself a survivor of the prison camps, and those of other prisoners. It also borrows from historical sources, including letters. The book gives readers outside the Soviet Union a picture into the regime’s brutality, describing how camps that only held a few people in 1917 saw their numbers swell to 15 million in the 1940s, many of whom were “politicals.” It chronicles how these people were transferred from camp to camp all the while being subjected to starvation, rape, torture, and inhuman living conditions.

The first volume of the book was published in 1973 in Paris, France. Afterward, the Soviet press denounced Solzhenitsyn. He was arrested a year later, charged with treason, and exiled from the Soviet Union.

Learning, Service, and Fun at Global Works Costa Rica Trip

Teens having fun
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Mathew "Matt" Kafker was a high honors and high credits student at his former high school, Middlesex School. During his time there, Matt Kafker took part in a Global Works trip to Costa Rica, where he helped renovate a local school. 

Global Works is an organization that provides teens with travel experiences that also incorporate community service, cultural exchange, adventure, and language immersion. These travel programs benefit not only the teens involved, but also the foreign communities the teens visit. These communities receive assistance in funding and in completing service projects. 

During the trip to Costa Rica, for example, Kafker and his friends were housed by a family in La Lucha. They interacted with the family over meals and even helped prepare local delicacies like tortillas and picadillo. They also interacted with local children through games like tag, sack racing, and jump rope, and even taught the local kids some American football. 

For their service work, the team helped renovate a local school. They mixed and poured cement for the school’s new side walk, painted the school’s exterior with fresh paint, and covered its drainage system with dirt. They also assisted the students in planning for English lessons. In between all this, they got to tour San Jose, paddle in deep forest rivers, dance salsa and merengue, marvel at the hot springs of Baldi, and go zip lining across the canopies.