The Gulag Archipelago is a book by Aleksandr

Solzhenitsyn about the Soviet forced labor camp

system.Wikipedia
Originally published: 1973
Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Publisher: ditions du Seuil
Country: France

Scene from the Gulag

Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a GULAG prisoner for 8 years
(1945 to 1953). His crime was saying what he thought
about Joseph Stalin - then the leader of the Soviet Union and someone overhearing (then reporting) his words.
Using his own experiences, extensive research and the
stories of 227 other GULAG prisoners, Solzhenitsyn paints a
sobering portrait of life as a forced laborer.
He uses the word archipelago to describe how thousands
of labor camps were all part of a single unit (the "Chief
Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps") just like small
islands can be part of a single city (Stockholm) or nation
(The Philippines). Using his words, in translation:
...that amazing country of Gulag which, though scattered in an
archipelago geographically, was, in the psychological sense,
fused into a continent - an almost invisible, almost
imperceptible, country inhabited by the zek people..Zek - the Russian word for prisoner - is how forced-laborers
were addressed in the camps.
When the Soviet secret police seized a copy of his GULAG
manuscript, in August of 1973, Solzhenitsyn - who won the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 - had his multi-volume
book published outside the Soviet Union. Not long

thereafter, the Nobel Laureate was deported from his own

country.
He returned, years later, after the Soviet Union no longer
existed as a unified nation.
This book-cover image depicts a scene from a forced-labor
camp which was part of the GULAG. Solzhenitsyn
published The Gulag Archipelago on December 28, 1973.

Who wrote The Gulag Archipelago?

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (1973) by Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn is is an account of the Soviet prison system,
based on extensive research andSolzhenitsyn's own
experiences as a prisoner in the Gulag. It is composed of 7
sections, and often divided into 3 volumes.