The Gulag Archipelago - Definition and Overview

The Gulag Archipelago (Архипелаг ГУЛаг), probably the most powerful and famous book about the Soviet prison system, is a three-volume history written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn based on extensive research as well as his own experiences as a prisoner in the Gulag. It was published in 1973.

GULAG (Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerei, "Chief Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps") is an acronym for the administration of the Soviet prison labor camp system. The word archipelago compares the system of labor camps spread across the Soviet Union with a vast "chain of islands", known only to those who were fated to visit it. It also produces a rhyming title in Russian (arkhipelág gulág) that is not reproduced in English translation.

Solzhenitsyn originally wrote the book in secret after his own term as a political prisoner, but he had it published abroad in 1973 after the KGB (Soviet secret police) confiscated a copy of the manuscript.

The detail of the book, which presented information on the putative crimes and criminals, their phony trials, the transportation and treatment of prisoners, which put the USSR in a negative light, all in the context of a long history of oppression dating back to Lenin's absorption of the Tsarist penal system, was used by Western anti-communists.

External links

• The Gulag Archipelago in original Russian, parts 1 and 2 (http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/gulag.txt), parts 3 and 4 (http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/gulag2.txt), and parts 5, 6, and 7 (http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/gulag3.txt).