The Gulag Archipelago
1973 essay by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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"The Gulag Archipelago" is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1973 essay documenting the Soviet Union's system of labor camps and prisons through historical research and personal testimony. It matters because it provided one of the most comprehensive and influential accounts of political repression under Soviet rule, exposing the scale and brutality of the system to international audiences.
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The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, romanized: Arkhipelag GULAG) is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian publisher YMCA-Press, and it was translated into English and French the following year. It explores a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system. Solzhenitsyn constructed his highly detailed narrative from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and his own experience as a Gulag prisoner.
Following its publication, the book was initially circulated in the Soviet Union by samizdat underground publication. It was not widely published there until 1989. It appeared that year in the literary journal Novy Mir; a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, The Gulag Archipelago has been officially published in Russia.