Jacques the Frenchman

Jacques Rossi is one of Stalins most well-known victims. Author of The Gulag Handbook, a fascinating encyclopedia of the Soviet forced labor camps, Rossi spent twenty years in interrogation, prison, and Gulag detention. Born to a prominent Polish father and French mother, the young Jacques became attracted to communism as a blueprint for radical social reform. He spent years in the communist underground in interwar Europe, agitating for the revolution, but he was arrested during Stalins Great Purges in 1937. This book represents a conversation between Jacques Rossi and Michle Sarde, professor emerita at Georgetown University, and weaves together personal reflections and historical analysis. Rossis remarkable life (19092004) spanned the twentieth century and sheds important light on the tumultuous history of Europe the appeal of communism in the interwar period and beyond, the mentality of party members, the effects of mass repression, everyday life in Stalins Gulag, and the problem of rights for former prisoners during the Khrushchev era. As he abandoned his internationalist communist beliefs, Rossi increasingly identified as French, embracing the name his fellow prisoners gave him in the Gulag, "Jacques the Frenchman." Rossis reflections on his own political beliefs, his frustrations with those who could not accept the truth of his brutal experiences in the Soviet Union, and his life as a witness to one of the twentieth centurys worst crimes offer a fascinating history of Stalinism and its legacies.