The Gulag Archipelago

The Gulag Archipelago () is a book in three volumes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The gulags were the forced labour camps in the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s.
The narrative relies on accounts from people who experienced the events, including the author himself, who was a prisoner in one of the labour camps. The book was written between 1958 and 1968. It was published in the West in 1973. In the Soviet Union, the book circulated in samizdat until its official publication in 1989.
The word "archipelago" compares the network of labor camps to a vast chain of islands.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Russian Federation, "The Gulag Archipelago" is included in the high-school curriculum in Russia. It has been compulsory reading for high-school students since 2009.