and you could take that to men he is not a very sophisticated person and is being melted by jefferson. and there may have been some truth to that. [applause] >> please joan us for a cool drink and a book are signing outside. thank you very much for coming. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> i'm very pleased to present to this audience my new book, "women only the gulag." pore rates of five remarkable lives, at is said about writing letters, it's mere difficult to write a short one than a long one. my book is short. and it attempts to capture sights, sounds, and smells of the great terror of 1937-1938, through the eyes of five women caught up in extraordinary circumstances. i wish to thank collectively my friends and colleagues at the hoover institution, the hoover institution library and archives, the hoover press, without which this book could

not have been written. so, there's too many here for me to thank them individually so i'd like to thank you collectively. now to the book itself. i've said this before but it's a good way to introduce the topic. stalin is purported to have said, the death of one person is a tragedy. the death of a million is a statistic. those of us who study soviet russia fall into this trap. we think we can convince people of stalin's evil by citing the millions who died in his famine, the hundreds of thousands shot during the great terror, '37-'38, and the millions of men, women and children who sat in his concentration camp and special settlements.

stalin's many admirers in today's russia, and even the west, admit that stalin may have done some bad things, but if you look at it, in its totality, maybe it's worth it. today stalin is among the most admired figures in contemporary russia, which may be hard for us to believe. my story transports us from the statistic to the tragedy. they tell us that overwhelmingly his victims were ordinary people, confused why they had been singled out. they tell us the fine dividing line between perpetrator and victim, unlike hitler's germany, the executioners became the executed. their stories tell us that the

wifes and children of the repressed could contaminate others and they had to be isolated from society also. each part of my book begins in stalin's office, apartment, or dacha as he and his henchman finalize the decrees of suppression. in this i leave stalin out. that for you to read about when you buy the book. i want to introduce you to four of my five women. you have to read the book to learn about the fifth. my women were not like -- selected in any scientific

fashion. rather, read through hundreds, probably more than hundreds, of unpublished memoirs, primarily collected by a foundation. ... today at noon eastern on c-span2 and sunday at 5:00 on c-span3. up next, author and scholar christina hoff summers, feminism critic and former philosophy professor talk about ethics in everyday life, the current state of feminism and policies she says harm young men. the resident scholar of