Gulag Archipelago (Harvill Press Editions) [Paperback]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2003 | Series: Harvill Press Editions

The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn's masterwork, a vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators and also of heroism, a Stalinist anti-world at the heart of the Soviet Union where the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair. The work is based on the testimony of some two hundred survivors, and on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn's own eleven years in labour camps and exile. It is both a thoroughly researched document and a feat of literary and imaginative power. This edition has been abridged into one volume at the author's wish and with his full co-operation.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918. He was brought up in Rostov, where he graduated in mathematics and physics in 1941. After distinguished service with the Red Army in the Second World War, he was imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for making unfavourable remarks about Josef Stalin. He was rehabilitated in 1956, but in 1969 he was expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union for denouncing official censorship of his work. He was forcibly exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and deported to West Germany. Later he settled in America, but after Soviet officials finally dropped charges against him in 1991, he returned to his homeland in 1994. He has written many books, of which One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago are his best known.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Random House (January 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1843430851
• ISBN-13: 978-1843430858
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.4 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,570,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning depiction of the epitome of Communist Tyranny, December 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Gulag Archipelago (Paperback)

If one defines a totalitarian sytsm as a classification of government which attempts, throught the use of power and coercion, to control and regulate all aspects of communication and organizational life, there can be no doubt that The Gulag System, as depicted in The Gulag Arcipelago was in fact a mirror reflection of the larger totalitarian regime, and the epitome of ideological disparity which both motovated and inhibited Russo-American relations throughout the cold war era. A skillfully crafted true-to-life account of the penal system of the Stalinist regime. Awesome in the true sense of the word.