The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Published in 1973, The Gulag Archipelago documents the Soviet forced labor camps that operated from 1918 to 1956. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn combines his own imprisonment experience with testimonies, written accounts, and correspondence from hundreds of fellow prisoners to construct a harrowing portrait of life under the gulag system. The work examines both the daily terror experienced by inmates and the institutional machinery that sustained this government-sanctioned network of camps.