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The Gulag Archipelago

By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offers a detailed exploration of the Soviet forced labour camp system. Blending personal experience with historical documentation, the book traces the human suffering, political oppression, and relentless impact on Soviet society under totalitarian rule. It serves as a powerful indictment of the regime and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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You might like this book if you are intrigued by historical accounts of political repression and human resilience. It delves into the life and struggles within Soviet labour camps, offering a powerful exploration of themes like survival, humanity, and the complex nature of truth. It appeals to those interested in understanding the broader impact of totalitarian regimes from a deeply personal and human perspective.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

It helped to bring down an empire. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated - Doris Lessing, Sunday Telegraph

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.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

The Gulag Archipelago is considered an essential work, providing profound insight into the consciousness of its era. Its powerful testimony and warning resonate through its pages, showcasing Solzhenitsyn as a monumental figure in literature and morality. The book is unparalleled in its impact on the political and ethical awareness of the late twentieth century.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781843430858

Publisher: Vintage Publishing

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 30 January 2003

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Harvill Secker

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 35.0mm

Width: 135.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 483g

Pages: 496

Collections

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Biography & Memoir Education & Reference History & Archaeology History & Military Non-Fiction Penguin Books Political Biographies Politics & Current Affairs Russian & Soviet History

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 and died in August 2008, aged 89. 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.

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