GULAG ARCHIPELAGO

 415209.11.2006

“The Gulag Archipelago” 1918 – 1956  An experiment in literary investigation” is a work by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in three volumes of over 1,600 pages).  It is a major documentary – literary investigation into the history of the political repression and prison and labour camp system in the USSR. The author made use of the accounts of many Ukrainian political prisoners, in particular Nadiya SUROVTSOVA, and wrote in positive terms of the fighters in the Ukrainian Resistance Army [UPA] in their struggle for human rights in captivity.

At the end of December 1973 the first volume of the work appeared in Paris, while at the same time excerpts were published in huge numbers in European and American journals in many different languages. Between 1974 and 1976 the second and third volumes of the “Gulag Archipelago” were published. The author who had by then been expelled from the country gave the royalties from the book to the Solzhenitsyn Foundation to help political prisoners and their families.

In the USSR the “Gulag Archipelago” was circulated through lists. A large number of people were tried and convicted on charges of duplicating and circulating the work, including the well-known dissidents Sergei KOVALYOV (Moscow), Zviyad Gamsakhurdiya (Georgia) and Viacheslav Igrunov (Odessa).

The first legal publication of the work in the USSR came in 1990.