The Gulag Archipelago Author:Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ) is a work based on the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is a massive narrative written based on eyewitness testimony and primary research material, as well as the auth... more »or's own experiences as a prisoner in a Gulag labor camp. Written between 1958 and 1968 (dates given at the end of the book) it was published in the West in 1973, thereafter circulating in samizdat (underground publication) form in the Soviet Union until its official publication in 1989. "GULag" is an acronym for the Russian term "Chief Administration for Corrective Labor Camps" (Russian: Главное Управление Лагерей), the bureaucratic name of the Soviet concentration camp main governing board, and by extension, the camp system itself. The original Russian title of the book is "Arkhipelag GULag", the rhyme supporting the underlying metaphor deployed throughout the work. The word archipelago compares the system of labor camps spread across the Soviet Union with a vast "chain of islands", known only to those who were fated to visit them.« less