The Gulag Archipelago

{{short description|1973 non-fiction book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn}} {{use dmy dates|date=June 2020}} {{Infobox book | name = The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation | image = Gulag Archipelago.jpg | image_size = 200px | image caption = | title_orig = Архипелаг ГУЛАГ | translator = {{ubl|Geneviève Johannet, José Johannet, Nikita Struve (French)|Thomas P. Whitney (English)|Tian Dawei (Chinese)|Francisco Augusto Ferreira, Maria Llistó, and José Augusto Seabra (Portuguese)}} | author = Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | country = France | language = Russian | series = | genre = | publisher = YMCA Press | pub_date = 1973 | english_pub_date = 1974 | media_type = Print (hardback and paperback) | pages = | isbn = 0-06-013914-5 | dewey = 365/.45/0947 | congress = HV9713 .S6413 1974 | oclc = 802879 | followed_by = }} '''''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation''''' ({{langx|ru|Архипелаг ГУЛАГ|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,<ref>{{Cite news |date=2023-12-28 |title=Goulag dans " Le Monde ", l'avant et l'après Soljenitsyne |language=fr |work=Le Monde.fr |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/m-le-mag/article/2023/12/28/goulag-dans-le-monde-l-avant-et-l-apres-soljenitsyne_6207992_4500055.html |access-date=2024-01-02}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-12-20 |title=Cinquante ans après avoir édité "L'Archipel du Goulag", la librairie Les Éditeurs réunis à Paris résiste encore |url=https://www.telerama.fr/livre/cinquante-ans-apres-avoir-edite-l-archipel-du-goulag-la-librairie-les-editeurs-reunis-a-paris-resiste-encore-7018567.php |access-date=2024-01-02 |website=www.telerama.fr |language=fr}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Pearce2011">{{cite book|author=Joseph Pearce|title=Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lgPwzq0M9lkC&pg=PT81|year=2011|publisher=Ignatius Press|isbn=978-1-58617-496-5|pages=81–}}</ref> Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ''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 and 2, parts 3 and 4, and parts 5 to 7. At one level, the ''Gulag Archipelago'' traces the history of the system of forced labor camps that operated in the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1956. Solzhenitsyn begins with Vladimir Lenin's original decrees that were made shortly after the October Revolution; they established the legal and practical framework for a series of camps where political prisoners and ordinary criminals would be sentenced to forced labor.{{ref|b|Note 2}}

The book describes and discusses the waves of purges and the assembling of show trials by Stalin through the 1930s in the context of the development of the greater Gulag system; Solzhenitsyn closely examines its purposive legal and bureaucratic development. The narrative ends in 1956 at the time of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech ("On the Personality Cult and its Consequences"). Khrushchev gave the speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, denouncing Joseph Stalin's personality cult, his autocratic power, and the widespread surveillance of all classes of people that pervaded the Stalin era.

Parallel to this historical and legal narrative, Solzhenitsyn follows the typical course of a ''zek'' through the Gulag. This was a slang term for an inmate, derived from the widely used abbreviation ''z''/''k'' for ''zakliuchenny'' ("prisoner"). He started with arrest, show trial, and initial internment, continuing with the transport to the Gulag. In that setting, he explored 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 practice of continued internal exile following the completion of the original prison sentence, and the ultimate but not guaranteed release of the prisoner, if one survived. 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.

== Thesis == In 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 fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations... Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago."<ref>{{cite book| author=Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn|title=The Gulag Archipelago|chapter=4|url=https://archive.org/details/gulagarchipelago03solz| url-access=registration| publisher=Harper & Row|edition=1st|date=1973|page=173|isbn=9780060139124 }}</ref>

Solzhenitsyn 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 amplified a concentration camp system that was already in place and this was significant because he said many Western intellectuals considered the Soviet prison camp system to be a Stalinist aberration.<ref>{{cite book| last= Thomas |first = Donald Michael | author-link = D. M. Thomas|title = Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: A Century in his Life| publisher = Abacus|year = 1998|location = London|pages = 439}}</ref>

Solzhenitsyn claims 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 others among the opposition tended to view it as a systemic fault of Soviet political culture, and an inevitable outcome of the Bolshevik political project.<ref>{{cite news| last=Cohen | first=Stephen|date=June 16, 1974|title=New York Times Book Review: The Gulag Archipelago| work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/16/archives/the-gulag-archipelago-by-aleksandr-i-solzhenitsyn-translated-by.html|access-date=April 9, 2024}}</ref>

== Publication == After the KGB had confiscated Solzhenitsyn's materials in Moscow, during 1965–1967, he worked to develop his preparatory drafts of ''The Gulag Archipelago'' into finished typescript. He accomplished some of this while in hiding at his friends' homes in the Moscow region and elsewhere.

While held at the KGB's Lubyanka Prison in 1945, Solzhenitsyn had befriended Arnold Susi, 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.<ref>Solzhenitsyn, ''The Oak and the Calf'' and ''Invisible Allies''</ref> Susi got the manuscript to his daughter, Heli Susi, who kept the "master copy" hidden from the KGB in Estonia until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.<ref>{{cite book |title=Art of the Baltics: The Struggle for Freedom of Artistic Expression Under the Soviets, 1945–1991 |last=Rosenfeld |first=Alla |author2=Norton T. Dodge |year=2001 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn= 978-0-8135-3042-0 |pages=55, 134 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r73fmcC5itkC}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Invisible Allies |last=Solzhenitsyn |first=Aleksandr |year=1997 |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-1-887178-42-6 |pages=46–64 The Estonians |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KIdLEAAAQBAJ }}</ref>

In 1973, the KGB seized one of only three existing copies of the text still on Soviet soil. This was achieved by interrogating Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, one of Solzhenitsyn's trusted typists<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/books/04solzhenitsyn.html Solzhenitsyn, Literary Giant Who Defied Soviets Dies at 89]</ref> 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 on the 3rd of August 1973. She had apparently either hanged herself or been murdered.<ref>Thomas, 1998, p. 398.</ref> Solzhenitsyn had wanted the manuscript to be first published in Russia, but knew this was impossible under conditions then extant. After Solzhenitsyn learned of Voronyanskaya's death he decided to allow its publication in Paris. The first edition of the work was published in Russian by the Parisian publishing house YMCA-Press (founded by Russian immigrants) a few days after Christmas 1973.<ref>Scammell, ''Solzhenitsyn, a Biography'', 1985</ref> 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 produced the English version. The English and French translations of Volume I appeared in the spring and summer of 1974.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Swayze |first1=Harold |title=The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment In Literary Investigation, I-II. By Aleksandr I. Solshenitsyn. Translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. xii, 660 pp. $12.50, cloth. $1.95, paper. - The Stalinist Terror In The Thirties: Documentation From The Soviet Press. Compiled with an introduction by Borys Levytsky. Hoover Institution Publications, 126. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1974. xxvii, 521 pp. $14.50. |journal=Slavic Review |date=December 1975 |volume=34 |issue=4 |pages=825–827 |doi=10.2307/2495739 |jstor=2495739 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

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, 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.

With the possible exception of ''One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'', 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 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 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 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.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Remnick |first1=David |title=The Exile Returns |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/02/14/the-exile-returns |access-date=30 July 2022 |magazine=The New Yorker |date=7 February 1994}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Reinsch II |first1=Richard M. |title=Truth In Exile |url=https://www.theamericanconservative.com/truth-in-exile/ |access-date=30 July 2022 |work=The American Conservative |date=28 November 2020}}</ref>

== Reception and impact == Beginning in 2009, Russian schools issued the book as required reading.<ref name="Reuters 2010">{{cite news|title=Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag' mandatory in Russian schools|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-book-solzhenitsyn/solzhenitsyns-gulag-mandatory-in-russian-schools-idUSTRE69P4MT20101026|publisher=Reuters|date=26 October 2010|access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref><ref name="Bourdreaux 2010">{{cite news|last=Boudreaux|first=Richard|title='Gulag Archipelago' Re-Issued for Russian Students|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303443904575578250132381936|work=The Wall Street Journal|date=28 October 2010}}</ref> Russian president Vladimir Putin called the book "much-needed",<ref name="Reuters 2010"/> while the Russian Ministry of Education said that the book showed "vital historical and cultural heritage on the course of 20th-century domestic history."<ref>{{cite news|title=Gulag Archipelago joins Russian curriculum |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/gulag-archipelago-joins-russian-curriculum-1.825588|publisher=CBC|date=9 September 2009}}</ref> Arseny Roginsky, the then head of the human-rights organization Memorial, welcomed Putin's backing for the Solzhenitsyn textbook.<ref name="Bourdreaux 2010"/> Solzhenitsyn’s widow created the abridged version for Russian high-school students,<ref name="Reuters 2010"/> including an introduction about the nature of Solzhenitsyn's "experiment in literary investigation."<ref name=NataliaSolzhenitsyn>[https://app.luminpdf.com/viewer/5ee236c7e8f0b4001277aade "Natalia Solzhenitsyn: Returning to 'The Gulag'"]. ''The New Criterion''. September 2012. Retrieved 13 August 2021.</ref>

The author’s first wife Natalya Reshetovskaya described her ex-husband's book as "folklore", telling a newspaper in 1974 that she felt the book was "not in fact the life of the country and not even the life of the camps but the folklore of the camps."<ref>{{cite news|date=6 February 1974|title=Solzhenitsyn's Ex-Wife Says 'Gulag' Is 'Folklore'|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/06/archives/solzhenitsyns-exwife-says-gulag-is-folklore.html|accessdate=27 June 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Lewis|first=Paul|date=6 June 2003|title=Natalya Reshetovskaya, 84, Is Dead; Solzhenitsyn's Wife Questioned 'Gulag'|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovskaya-84-is-dead-solzhenitsyn-s-wife-questioned-gulag.html|accessdate=27 June 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Her books were published by the Novosti Press, a state-run media founded by the USSR Council of People's Commissars and the Communist Party Central Committee. Her editor there was Konstantin Semyonov, and he became her third husband.<ref>{{cite news|last=Smith|first=J.Y.|date=5 June 2003|title=Natalya Reshetovskaya Dies at 84|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2003/06/05/natalya-reshetovskaya-dies-at-84/15a67b5d-284c-4c88-a167-e4c36a4a7ee5/|access-date=5 July 2022|issn=2641-9599}}</ref>

=== Academic === Historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft 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 inaccurately high estimate as he wanted to challenge the Soviet authorities to show that "the scale of the camps was less than this."<ref name="Wheatcroft1996S">{{cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen|author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft|year=1996|title=The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930–45|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=48|issue=8|pages=1330|doi=10.1080/09668139608412415|jstor=152781|quote=When Solzhenitsyn wrote and distributed his Gulag Archipelago it had enormous political significance and greatly increased popular understanding of part of the repression system. But this was a literary and political work; it never claimed to place the camps in a historical or social-scientific quantitative perspective, Solzhenitsyn cited a figure of 12–15 million in the camps. But this was a figure that he hurled at the authorities as a challenge for them to show that the scale of the camps was less than this.}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen G.|date=March 1999|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Secret_Police.pdf|title=Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data. Not the Last Word|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|location=London, England|publisher=Routledge|volume=51|issue=2|pages=340–342|doi=10.1080/09668139999056|jstor=153614|accessdate=4 September 2021|via=Soviet Studies|quote=For decades, many historians counted Stalin' s victims in 'tens of millions', which was a figure supported by Solzhenitsyn. Since the collapse of the USSR, the lower estimates of the scale of the camps have been vindicated. The arguments about excess mortality are far more complex than normally believed. R. Conquest, ''The Great Terror: A Re-assessment'' (London, 1992) does not really get to grips with the new data and continues to present an exaggerated picture of the repression. The view of the 'revisionists' has been largely substantiated (J. Arch Getty & R. T. Manning (eds), ''Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives'' (Cambridge, 1993)). The popular press, even ''TLS'' and ''The Independent'', have contained erroneous journalistic articles that should not be cited in respectable academic articles.|postscript=. At p. 341.}}</ref>

UCLA historian J. Arch Getty wrote of Solzhenitsyn's methodology that "such documentation is methodologically unacceptable in other fields of history" and that "the work is of limited value to the serious student of the 1930s for it provides no important new information or original analytical framework.<ref>Getty, J. Arch (1981). ''Origins of the Great Purges''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 211.</ref><ref>Getty, J. Arch (1981). ''Origins of the Great Purges''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 218-9</ref> Gabor Rittersporn shared Getty's criticism, saying that "he is inclined to give priority to vague reminiscences and hearsay ... [and] inevitably [leads] towards selective bias", adding that "one might dwell at length on the inaccuracies discernible in Solzhenitsyn’s work".<ref>Rittersporn, Gabor (1991). ''Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933–1953''. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers. pp. 231–235.</ref> Vadim Rogovin writes of the eyewitness accounts that Solzhenitsyn had read, saying he "took plenty of license in outlining their contents and interpreting them".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim |title=1937: Year of Terror |date=1998 |page=xx}}</ref> Both Rogovin and Walter Laquer argue that the book belongs to the genre of 'oral history'.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Laquer |first1=Walter |title=Stalin The Glasnost Revelations |date=1990 |publisher=Scribner's |page=127}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim |title=1937 Stalin's Year of Terror |date=1998 |publisher=Mehring Books |page=xx}}</ref>

In an interview with the German weekly newspaper ''Die Zeit'', British historian Orlando Figes 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."<ref>Held des Westens, ''Die Zeit'', 7 August 2008</ref> Soviet dissident and historian Roy Medvedev referred to the book as "extremely contradictory".<ref>Medvedev, Roy. On Stalin and Stalinism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. ix</ref> 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." In the same review, he also writes that "This book is full of thoughts and observations, some profound and true, others perhaps not always true but born in the monstrous sufferings of tens of millions of persons."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Medvedev |first1=Roy |title=Excerpts From Roy Medvedev's Essay on Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/07/archives/excerpts-from-roy-medvedevs-essay-on-solzhenitsyns-gulag.html |work=The New York Times |date=7 February 1974}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Medvedev |first1=Roy |title=On Solzhenitsyn's Book The Gulag Archipelago |journal=Soviet Studies in Literature |publisher=Taylor & Francis Online|date=1974 |volume=10 |issue=3|pages=44–62 |doi=10.2753/RSL1061-1975100344 }}</ref>

=== Popular press === Novelist Doris Lessing said that the book "brought down an empire",<ref name=TBB50/> while author Michael Scammell 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."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Scammell |first1=Michael |title=The Writer Who Destroyed an Empire |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/opinion/solzhenitsyn-soviet-union-putin.html |work=The New York Times |date=11 December 2018 |access-date=8 January 2022|quote=In 1973, still in the Soviet Union, he sent abroad his literary and polemical masterpiece, 'The Gulag Archipelago.' The nonfiction account exposed the enormous crimes that had led to the wholesale incarceration and slaughter of millions of innocent victims, demonstrating that its dimensions were on a par with the Holocaust. Solzhenitsyn's gesture amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state, calling its very legitimacy into question and demanding revolutionary change.}}</ref> About its impact, philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote: "Until the Gulag, the Communists and their allies had persuaded their followers that denunciations of the regime were largely bourgeois propaganda."<ref name=TBB50>{{cite book |last1=Butler-Bowdon |first1=Tom |title=50 Politics Classics: Freedom, Equality, Power (50 Classics) |publisher=Nicholas Brealey |pages=Chapter 43 |edition=Kindle}}</ref> United States diplomat George F. Kennan said that the book was "the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times."<ref name=economistopinion>[http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11885318 "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Speaking truth to power"]. ''The Economist''. 7 August 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2021.</ref>

Author Tom Butler-Bowdon has described the book as a "Solzhenitsyn's monument to the millions tortured and murdered in Soviet Russia between the Bolshevik Revolution and the 1950s."<ref name=TBB50/> An edition of ''The Book Show'' said that the book helped expose the brutality of the Soviet system.<ref>{{cite news |last=Mares |first=Peter |date=12 August 2008|title=Alexander Solzhenitsyn |url=https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/bookshow/alexander-solzhenitsyn/3199040 |publisher=ABC AU|access-date=8 January 2022|quote =The author of a One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward, First Circle and many other books, Solzhenitsyn exposed the brutality of the Soviet system to his fellow Russians and to the rest of the world...he criticised the system, as we know, and he wrote The Gulag Archipelago which was a study of the way in which the gulag system worked, but at the same time as having that systematic critique of the Soviet Union, he never let go of the idea of individual responsibility within it, did he, a personal morality.}}</ref> Psychologist Jordan Peterson, who wrote the foreword of an abridged fiftieth anniversary edition released on 1 November 2018,<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/104/1049544/the-gulag-archipelago/9781784871512.html|title=The Gulag Archipelago|publisher=Penguin|date=November 2018 |access-date=4 March 2019}}</ref> described ''The Gulag Archipelago'' as the most important book of the twentieth century.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Hains |first1=Tim |title=Jordan Peterson On Soviet Horrors, The Gulag Archipelago: 'This Is Not Widespread Knowledge' |url=https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/09/30/jordan_peterson_on_soviet_history_this_is_not_widespread_knowledge.html |publisher=Real Clear Politics |date=30 September 2018|access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref>

Parallels have been drawn between the book and the treatment of Liao Yiwu, a dissident who is dubbed "the Chinese Solzhenitsyn" according to the Agence France-Presse.<ref>{{cite news |title=China is 'threat to world' says dissident writer |url=https://www.france24.com/en/20190405-china-threat-world-says-dissident-writer |website=France 24 |date=5 April 2019|access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref> 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 [Soviet dissident Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn did in ''The Gulag Archipelago''."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Svrluga |first1=Susan |title=Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu to speak at Patrick Henry College |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-state-of-nova/post/chinese-dissident-liao-yiwu-to-speak-at-patrick-henry-college/2011/10/17/gIQAIfTrrL_blog.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=17 October 2011|access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref>

== Television documentary == In December 2009, the Russian channel ''Rossiya K'' showed the French television documentary ''L'Histoire Secrète de l'Archipel du Goulag''<ref name="Rossiya K">{{cite web|title='Тайная история "Архипелага ГУЛАГ"'. Премьера фильма|url=http://tvkultura.ru/brand/show/brand_id/32856|publisher=The press service the channel Rossiya K|access-date=23 August 2011|date=12 December 2009|archive-date=19 September 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200919031642/https://tvkultura.ru/brand/show/brand_id/32856/|url-status=dead}}</ref> made by Jean Crépu and Nicolas Miletitch,<ref name="Nicolaev">{{cite news|last=Marina|first=Nicolaev|title=Ultimul interviu Aleksandr Soljeniţîn: 'L\'histoire secrète de L\'ARCHIPEL DU GULAG'|url=http://www.poezie.ro/index.php/article/13908962/index.html|access-date=23 August 2011|newspaper=Poezie|date=10 October 2009}}</ref> 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''.<ref name="Rossiya K"/><ref>{{cite book|url=http://video.yandex.ru/users/fancyfly/view/39/|title=Secret History: The Gulag Archipelago|publisher=Video.yandex.ru|language=ru|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130113181358/http://video.yandex.ru/users/fancyfly/view/39/|archive-date=13 January 2013|df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref>Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/adc34lToCYM Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20200317091112/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adc34lToCYM&app=desktop Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adc34lToCYM|title=Secret History {{!}} The Gulag Archipelago|last1=Crepu|first1=Jean|last2=Miletitch|first2=Nicolas|website=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

== Explanatory notes == :1.{{note|a}} In Russian, the term ''GULAG'' ({{lang|ru|ГУЛАГ}}) is an acronym for Main Directorate of Camps ({{lang|ru|Главное управление лагерей}}). :2.{{note|b}} A similar (but on vastly smaller scale) network of forced labour camps, known as ''katorga'', existed in the Russian Empire since the early 18th century. It was abolished by the Russian Provisional Government in 1917.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jakobson|first=Michael|year=1992|title=Origins of the Gulag: The Soviet Prison Camp System, 1917–1934|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|page=16|isbn=9780813117966}}</ref>

== References == {{reflist}}

== External links == {{Wikiquote}} * {{cite book|author=Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr |title=The Gulag Archipelago|date=17 January 2024 |url=https://archive.org/details/TheGulagArchipelagoVolumeI |language=ru}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20130311152853/http://a-solzhenitsyn.narod.ru/arhipelag_gulag/ All volumes for reading in browser], or plaintext: [http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/gulag.txt parts 1 and 2], [http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/gulag2.txt parts 3 and 4], and [http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/gulag3.txt parts 5, 6, and 7]. * {{cite book|author=Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr |title=The Gulag Archipelago|publisher=Internet Archive (various formats)}} [https://archive.org/details/TheGulagArchipelago-Threevolumes All Volumes] * {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060527214210/http://english.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2006-15-35 |date=27 May 2006 |title=Saving the Nation Is the Utmost Priority for the State }} ''Moscow News'' (2006-05-02) * {{cite news|work=The New York Times|author=Cohen, Stephen F.| title=Books: ''The Gulag Archipelago''|date=16 June 1974|url= https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/solz-gulag.html |access-date=7 December 2014}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gulag Archipelago, The}} Category:1973 non-fiction books Category:Books critical of communism Category:Censored books Category:Counterculture of the 1960s Category:Éditions du Seuil books Category:Gulag memoirs Category:Novels about political repression in the Soviet Union Category:Novels set in the Gulag Category:Novels set in the Stalin era Category:Works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn