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''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English and French the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
, the Soviet
forced labour camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner. Following its publication, the book initially circulated in ''
samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...
'' underground publication in the Soviet Union until its appearance in the literary journal ''
Novy Mir ''Novy Mir'' (russian: links=no, Новый мир, , ''New World'') is a Russian-language monthly literary magazine. History ''Novy Mir'' has been published in Moscow since January 1925. It was supposed to be modelled on the popular pre-Soviet ...
'' in 1989, in which a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
, ''The Gulag Archipelago'' has been officially published in Russia.


Structure

As structured in most printed editions, the text comprises seven sections divided into three volumes: parts 1–2, parts 3–4, and parts 5–7. At one level, the ''Gulag Archipelago'' traces the history of the system of forced labor camps that existed in the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1956. Solzhenitsyn begins with
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
's original decrees which were made shortly after the
October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
; they established the legal and practical framework for a series of camps where political prisoners and ordinary criminals would be sentenced to
forced labor Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
. The book then describes and discusses the waves of
purge In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertak ...
s and the assembling of
show trial A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...
s in the context of the development of the greater Gulag system; Solzhenitsyn gives particular attention to its purposive legal and bureaucratic development. The narrative ends in 1956 at the time of
Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
's Secret Speech ("
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», «''O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh''»), popularly known as the "Secret Speech" (russian: секре ...
"). Khrushchev gave the speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, denouncing
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
's
personality cult A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) ''Populism: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. is the result of an effort which is made to create an id ...
, his autocratic power, and the surveillance that pervaded the Stalin era. Although Khrushchev's speech was not published in the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
for a long time, it was a break with the most atrocious practices of the Gulag system. Despite the efforts by Solzhenitsyn and others to confront the legacy of the Gulag, the realities of the camps remained a
taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
subject until the 1980s. Solzhenitsyn was also aware that although many practices had been stopped, the basic structure of the system had survived and it could be revived and expanded by future leaders. While Khrushchev, the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union's supporters in the West viewed the Gulag as a deviation of Stalin, Solzhenitsyn and many among the opposition tended to view it as a systemic fault of Soviet political culture, and an inevitable outcome of the
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
political project. Parallel to this historical and legal narrative, Solzhenitsyn follows the typical course of a '' zek'', a slang term for an
inmate A prisoner (also known as an inmate or detainee) is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison. ...
derived from the widely used abbreviation ''z''/''k'' for ''zakliuchennyi'' ("prisoner"), through the Gulag, starting with arrest,
show trial A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...
, and initial internment, continuing with the transport to the Gulag, the treatment of prisoners and their general living conditions, slave labor gangs and the technical prison camp system, camp rebellions and strikes, such as the
Kengir uprising The Kengir uprising was a prisoner rebellion that occurred in Kengir (Steplag), a Soviet labor camp for political prisoners, during May and June of 1954. Its duration and intensity distinguished it from other Gulag rebellions during the same peri ...
, the practice of internal exile following the completion of the original prison sentence, and the ultimate but not guaranteed release of the prisoner. Along the way, Solzhenitsyn's examination details the trivial and commonplace events of an average prisoner's life, as well as specific and noteworthy events during the history of the Gulag system, including revolts and uprisings. At Chapter 4, Solzhenitsyn writes: "Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ''ideology''. Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes.... That was how the agents of the
Inquisition The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
fortified their wills: by invoking
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by
civilization A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). Ci ...
; the
Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
, by
race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
; and the
Jacobin , logo = JacobinVignette03.jpg , logo_size = 180px , logo_caption = Seal of the Jacobin Club (1792–1794) , motto = "Live free or die"(french: Vivre libre ou mourir) , successor = Pa ...
s (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations... Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago." There had been works about the Soviet prison/camp system before, and its existence had been known to the Western public since the 1930s. However, never before had the general reading public been brought face to face with the horrors of the Gulag in this way. The controversy surrounding this text, in particular, was largely due to the way Solzhenitsyn definitively and painstakingly laid the theoretical, legal, and practical origins of the Gulag system at Lenin's feet, not Stalin's. According to Solzhenitsyn's testimony, Stalin merely amplified a
concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
system that was already in place; this is significant, as many Western intellectuals viewed the Soviet concentration camp system as a Stalinist aberration.


Publication

After the KGB had confiscated Solzhenitsyn's materials in Moscow, during 1965–1967, the preparatory drafts of ''The Gulag Archipelago'' were turned into finished typescript, sometimes in hiding at his friends' homes in the Moscow region and elsewhere. While held at the KGB's
Lubyanka Prison The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...
in 1945, Solzhenitsyn had befriended
Arnold Susi Arnold Susi (; 4 January 1896 – 29 May 1968) was a lawyer and the Minister of Education in the Estonian government of Otto Tief established on 18 September 1944 during WWII. In 1945, Susi befriended Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in a Soviet prison. ...
, a lawyer and former Estonian Minister of Education, who had been taken captive after the Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1944. Solzhenitsyn entrusted Susi with the original typed and proofread manuscript of the finished work, after copies had been made of it both on paper and on microfilm. Arnold Susi's daughter, Heli Susi, subsequently kept the "master copy" hidden from the KGB in Estonia until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1973, the
KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
seized one of only three existing copies of the text still on Soviet soil. This was achieved after interrogating Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, one of Solzhenitsyn's trusted typists who knew where the typed copy was hidden; within days of her release by the KGB she was found hanged in the stairwell of her apartment; she had apparently either hanged herself or been murdered (3 August 1973). Although he had earlier wanted it published in Russia first, after Solzhenitsyn learned of her death, he decided the next month, September, to allow its publication in Paris. The first edition of the work was published (in Russian) by the French publishing house
Éditions du Seuil Éditions du Seuil (), also known as ''Le Seuil'', is a French publishing house established in 1935 by Catholic intellectual Jean Plaquevent (1901–1965), and currently owned by La Martinière Groupe. It owes its name to this goal "The ''seuil'' ...
a few days after Christmas 1973; they had received a go-ahead from Solzhenitsyn but had decided to release the work about ten days earlier than he had expected. News of the nature of the work immediately caused a stir, and translations into many other languages followed within the next few months, sometimes produced in a race against time. American
Thomas P. Whitney Thomas Porter Whitney (January 26, 1917 in Toledo, Ohio – December 2, 2007 in Manhattan, New York) was an American diplomat, author, translator, philanthropist and Thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder. Biography Born in Toledo, Ohio, Whitne ...
produced the English version; the English and French translations of Volume I appeared in the spring and summer of 1974. Solzhenitsyn had wanted the manuscript to be published in Russia first, but knew this was impossible under conditions then extant. The work had a profound effect internationally. Not only did it provoke energetic debate in the West; a mere six weeks after the work had left Parisian presses Solzhenitsyn himself was forced into exile. Because possession of the manuscript incurred the risk of a long prison sentence for "anti-Soviet activities", Solzhenitsyn never worked on the manuscript in complete form. Since he was under constant KGB surveillance, Solzhenitsyn worked on only parts of the manuscript at any one time, so as not to put the full book into jeopardy if he happened to be arrested. For this reason, he secreted the various parts of the work throughout Moscow and the surrounding suburbs, in the care of trusted friends. Sometimes when he was purportedly visiting them on social calls he actually worked on the manuscript in their homes. During much of this time, Solzhenitsyn lived at the dacha of the world-famous cellist
Mstislav Rostropovich Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, (27 March 192727 April 2007) was a Russian cellist and conductor. He is considered by many to be the greatest cellist of the 20th century. In addition to his interpretations and technique, he was wel ...
, and due to the reputation and standing of the musician, despite the elevated scrutiny of the Soviet authorities, Solzhenitsyn was reasonably safe from KGB searches there. Solzhenitsyn did not think this series would be his defining work, as he considered it journalism and history rather than high literature. With the possible exception of ''
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ''One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' (russian: links=no, italics=yes, Один день Ивана Денисовича, Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha, ) is a short novel by the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first p ...
'', it is his best-known and most popular work, at least in the West. Finished in 1968, ''The Gulag Archipelago'' was microfilmed and smuggled out to Solzhenitsyn's main legal representative, Fritz Heeb of Zürich, to await publication; a later paper copy, also smuggled out, was signed by
Heinrich Böll Heinrich Theodor Böll (; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll is a recipient of the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). ...
at the foot of each page to prove against possible accusations of a falsified work. Solzhenitsyn was aware that there was a wealth of material and perspectives about
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
to be continued in the future, but he considered the book finished for his part. The royalties and sales income for the book were transferred to the
Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund The Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund (officially Russian Public Fund to Aid Political Prisoners and their Families, also Fund for the Aid of Political Prisoners, Public Aid Fund) was a charity foundation and support network set up by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn a ...
for aid to former camp prisoners. His fund, (The Russian Social Fund), which had to work in secret in its native country, managed to transfer substantial amounts of money towards helping former gulag prisoners in the 1970s and 1980s.


Reception and impact

Beginning in 2009, Russian schools issued the book as required reading. Russian president
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
called the book "much-needed", while the Russian Ministry of Education said that the book showed "vital historical and cultural heritage on the course of 20th-century domestic history."
Arseny Roginsky Arseny Borisovich Roginsky (russian: Арсе́ний Бори́сович Роги́нский; 30 March 1946 – 18 December 2017)Luxmoore, Matthew (23 December 2017).. ''The New York Times''. nytimes.com. Retrieved 25 December 2 ...
, then head of the human-rights organization
Memorial A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of a ...
, welcomed Putin's backing for the Solzhenitsyn textbook. Natalya Reshetovskaya, Solzhenitsyn's first wife, wrote in her 1974 memoir that her husband did not regard the work as historical research nor scientific research, and stated that it was a collection of camp folklore containing raw material which Solzhenitsyn was planning to use in his future productions. Her books were published by the Novosti Press, which was run by the KGB. Her editor there was Konstantin Semyonov, and he became her third husband.


Academic

Historian and archival researcher
Stephen G. Wheatcroft Stephen George Wheatcroft (born 1 June 1947) is a Professorial Fellow of the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne. His research interests include Russian pre-revolutionary and Soviet social, economic and demographic history, as ...
described the book as "a fine literary masterpiece, a sharp political indictment against the Soviet regime, and has had tremendous importance in raising the issue of Soviet repression in the Russian consciousness." Wheatcroft wrote that the book was essentially a "literary and political work", and "never claimed to place the camps in a historical or social-scientific quantitative perspective" but that in the case of qualitative estimates, Solzhenitsyn gave his high estimate as he wanted to challenge the Soviet authorities to show that "the scale of the camps was less than this."
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
historian
J. Arch Getty John Archibald Getty III (born November 30, 1950) is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who specializes in the history of Russia and the history of the Soviet Union. Life and career Getty was ...
wrote of Solzhenitsyn's methodology that "such documentation is methodically unacceptable in other fields of history." Gabor Rittersporn shared Getty's criticism, saying that "he is inclined to give priority to vague reminiscences and hearsay ... ndinevitably
eads Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: '' ...
towards selective bias." In an interview with the German weekly newspaper ''
Die Zeit ''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles. History The ...
'', British historian
Orlando Figes Orlando Guy Figes () is a British historian and writer. Until his retirement, he was Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Figes is known for his works on Russian history, such as '' A People's Tragedy'' (1996), ''Nata ...
stated that many Gulag inmates he interviewed for his research identified so strongly with the book's contents that they became unable to distinguish between their own experiences and what they read: "''The Gulag Archipelago'' spoke for a whole nation and was the voice of all those who suffered." Soviet dissident and historian
Roy Medvedev Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev (russian: Рой Алекса́ндрович Медве́дев; born 14 November 1925) is a Russian political writer. He is the author of the dissident history of Stalinism, ''Let History Judge'' (russian: К с ...
referred to the book as "extremely contradictory"; in a review for the book, Medvedev described it as without parallel for its impact, saying: "I believe there are few who will get up from their desks after reading this book the same as when they opened its first page. In this regard I have nothing with which to compare Solzhenitsyn's book either in Russian or world literature."


Popular press

Natalya Reshetovskaya described her husband's book as "folklore", telling a newspaper in 1974 that "the subject of 'Gulag Archipelago,' as I felt at the moment when he was writing it, is not in fact the life of the country and not even the life of the camps but the folklore of the camps." In her 1974 memoir, Reshetovskaya wrote that Solzhenitsyn did not consider the novel to be "historical research, or scientific research", and stated that the significance of the novel had been "overestimated and wrongly appraised." Reshetovskaya created an abridged version for Russian high-school students, including her probing introduction about the unique nature of Solzhenitsyn's "experiment in literary investigation.""Natalia Solzhenitsyn: Returning to 'The Gulag'"
''
The New Criterion ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
''. September 2012. Retrieved 13 August 2021.
Novelist
Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...
said that the book "brought down an empire", while author
Michael Scammell Michael Scammell (born 1935) is an English author, biographer and translator of Slavic literature. Education Michael Scammell was born in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, England, attended Brockenhurst Grammar School, and after two years working as a copy ...
described the book as a gesture that "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state, calling its very legitimacy into question and demanding revolutionary change." About its impact, philosopher
Isaiah Berlin Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...
wrote: "Until the Gulag, the Communists and their allies had persuaded their followers that denunciations of the regime were largely bourgeois propaganda." United States diplomat
George F. Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly hist ...
said that the book was "the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times.""Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Speaking truth to power"
''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
''. 7 August 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2021.
Author
Tom Butler-Bowdon Tom Butler-Bowdon (; born 1967) is a non-fiction author based in Oxford, England. Early life Butler-Bowdon was born in Adelaide. He graduated from the University of Sydney (BA Hons, Government and History) and the London School of Economics (MSc ...
has described the book as a "Solzhenitsyn's monument to the millions tortured and murdered in Soviet Russia between the
Bolshevik Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks, Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was ...
and the 1950s." An edition of ''
The Book Show Radio National, known on-air as RN, is an Australia-wide public service broadcasting radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2. History 1937: Predecessors an ...
'' said that the book helped expose the brutality of the Soviet system. Psychologist
Jordan Peterson Jordan Bernt Peterson (born 12 June 1962) is a Canadian media personality, clinical psychologist, author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. He began to receive widespread attention as a public intellectual in the late 2010s ...
, who wrote the foreword of an abridged fiftieth anniversary edition released on 1 November 2018, described ''The Gulag Archipelago'' as the most important book of the twentieth century. Parallels have been drawn between the book and the treatment of
Liao Yiwu Liao may refer to: Chinese history * Liao (Zhou dynasty state) (蓼), two states in ancient China during the Spring and Autumn period in the 8th and 7th centuries BC * Liao of Wu (吳王僚) (died 515 BC), king of Wu during ancient China's Spring a ...
, a dissident who is dubbed "the Chinese Solzhenitsyn" according to the
Agence France-Presse Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency. AFP has regional headquarters in Nicosia, Montevideo, Hong Kong and Washington, D.C ...
. Author David Aikman stated that Liao is the first Chinese dissident writer to "come up with a very detailed account of prison conditions including torture in China in the same way that oviet dissident AleksandrSolzhenitsyn did in ''The Gulag Archipelago''." In 2019, journalist
Mustafa Akyol Mustafa Akyol (born 20 February 1972) is a Turkish writer and journalist. He is the author of ''Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty'', long-listed in 2012 for the Lionel Gelber Prize, a literary award for the world's best non-ficti ...
drew a parallel between the book and
Xinjiang re-education camps The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers ( zh, 职业技能教育培训中心, Zhíyè jìnéng jiàoyù péixùn zhōngxīn) by the government of China, are internment camps operated by ...
.


Television documentary

On 12 December 2009, the Russian channel '' Rossiya K'' showed the French television documentary ''L'Histoire Secrète de l'Archipel du Goulag'' made by Jean Crépu and Nicolas Miletitch, and translated it into Russian under the title ''Taynaya Istoriya "Arkhipelaga GULAG"'' (''Secret History: The Gulag Archipelago''). The documentary covers events related to the writing and publication of ''The Gulag Archipelago''.


See also

*
Art and culture in the Gulag labor camps Art and culture took on a variety of forms in the forced labor camps of the Gulag system that existed across the Soviet Union during the first half of the twentieth century. Theater, music, visual art, and literature played a role in camp life for ...
*
Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times. In particular, its Article 58-1 was updated by the listed sub-articles and ...
* ''
The Black Book of Communism ''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'' is a 1997 book by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics documenting a history of political repression by co ...
'' *
Black site In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with a ...
*
Law of Spikelets The Law of Spikelets or Law of Three Spikelets (russian: Закон о трёх колосках, Закон о пяти колосках, Закон семь-восемь) was a decree in the Soviet Union to protect state property of kolkhozes (So ...
, whereby persons were imprisoned for theft of communal property as part of the Seven-Eighths Rule * ''Le Monde'' 100 Books of the Century *
Julius Margolin Julius Margolin (russian: Юлий (Юлиус) Борисович Марголин, October 14, 1900 – January 21, 1971) was a Russian Empire-born Israeli writer and political activist. He was the author of ''A Journey to the Land Ze-Ka'' (Пу ...
* Nikolai Trifonov


Explanatory notes

:1. In Russian, the term ''GULAG'' () is an acronym for Main Directorate of Camps (). :2. A similar network of forced labour camps, known as ''
katorga Katorga ( rus, ка́торга, p=ˈkatərɡə; from medieval and modern Greek: ''katergon, κάτεργον'', "galley") was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (see Katorga labor in the Soviet Union). Prisoner ...
'', existed in the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
since the early 18th century. It was abolished by the
Russian Provisional Government The Russian Provisional Government ( rus, Временное правительство России, Vremennoye pravitel'stvo Rossii) was a provisional government of the Russian Republic, announced two days before and established immediately ...
in 1917. :3. Wheatcroft stated that historians relied on Solzhenitsyn to support their estimates of deaths under Stalin in the tens of millions but research in the state archives vindicated the lower estimates, while adding that the popular press has continued to include serious errors that should not be cited, or relied on, in academia.


References


External links

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All Volumes
* ''Moscow News'' (2006-05-02) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gulag Archipelago, The 1973 non-fiction books Censored books Éditions du Seuil books Gulag memoirs Novels about political repression in the Soviet Union Novels set in the Gulag Novels set in the Stalin era Works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn