"Gulag Archipelago" now required reading... in Russia?

[Mr Khan]

Kasz216 said:

Well russia is just trying to transition into an Iran like state.

Where the is a democracy technically. It's just the voting doesn't effect the major issues of the country and only token issues.

It's all a matter of balancing what was done with justification for why it was done... however not ignoring the fact that it was done... and also showing that they're different from the USSR, yet the same in the ways people want.

Since a lot of eastern europeons perplexidly look back happily on such days.

There was a certain sense of glory to it, it's understandable. They were oppressed, but they were part of something bigger, something strong. They commanded the respect of the world, if only through their power. This feeling was more prevalent in the past, too, especially during the economic collapse that followed the final end of Communism in the Soviet Union, but even in the rest of the former Warsaw Pact, there's going to be this sense of nostalgia in a few.