<![CDATA[On the 28th December 1973 "The Gulag Archipelago", Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's literary account of the Soviet Union's police system, was released in Paris. Although published in its original Russian, it would be translated into a variety of different languages within a few months, making its depiction of Soviet oppression available to an international audience. The three volume work played a crucial role in exposing those on the west side of the Iron Curtain to the harsh realities on the east, leading to a dramatic reappraisal of Marxism and Communism. The title of the book reveals the Nobel Peace Prize winning novelist's motivations for writing it. "Gulag" was the acronym given to the central office responsible for administrating the host of labour camps dotted around the Soviet Union. "Archipelago" was Solzhenitsyn's metaphor for the network of camps itself, a secret country within the Soviet Union, a chain of scattered islands stretching from the "Bering Strait almost to the Bosporus". The work aimed to depict life within this network of camps, while also looking at the administration responsible for both its foundation and continuation. Solzhenitsyn himself spent eight years of his life in various Soviet prison camps. This gave him first hand experience of their brutal conditions, and enabled him to collect a wealth of stories and accounts from others. The first two volumes focus extensively on arrest, conviction, transportation, and imprisonments within the Gulag system. Historical descriptions of the processes involved are interspersed with harrowing accounts of events from the author's own experience, and the letters of "227 witnesses". Inevitably following the book's Paris publication, Solzhenitsyn was quickly denounced by the official Soviet press. In February 1974 he was arrested and then exiled from the country. The book continued to be illegally distributed, and secretly circulated throughout the USSR. Solzhenitsyn, already well known for his work 'A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich', became one of the most important voices in Russian literature, but one whose works were at best taboo, and at worst, dangerous to be in possession of. The 1973 publication of the book also had a dramatic impact outside the Soviet Union. Stories of state organised violence had appeared from the Russian Revolution onwards. The Stalinist purges had not gone unnoticed, although their horrific extent was maybe not truly comprehended. By the time of the aggressive suppression of pro-democratic uprisings in Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1968, it was clear that the harsh authoritarianism of Stalin's reign had not ended with his death in 1956. Solzhenitsyn's work was so potent because it not only provided graphic detail of the violence the Soviet State committed against its own people, it linked it with the Communist political system itself and not just individual leaders. The Gulag Archipelago made the case that police terror was an essential component to the maintenance of Communism in the Soviet Union. The scope and scale of the book, combined with the diverse sources Solzhenitsyn deployed in its creation, meant it was impossible to ignore. For Europeans and Americans on the political left the book was a game changer, forcing them to reevaluate their position and permanently altering the coordinates of the debate between Communism and Capitalism. The book came at a time when left wing politics in general were being reappraised. In the aftermath of the Second World War many Western European countries adopted left leaning governments, and the 'swinging sixties' were associated with a massive enthusiasm for alternative political systems. For a host of reasons, the reality of the Cold War combined with economic hardships saw this support for the left deteriorate in the seventies. Solzhenitsyn's work can be seen as crucial text in this changing of attitudes about left wing politics; a single book which showed the epitome of the evils that could come from the pursuit of Communism. Solzhenitsyn died in Moscow, in 2008, just 14 years after he had finally returned to live in Russia. The impact of the Gulag Archipelago on attitudes towards Marxism and Communism however, can still be felt. Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons user: Evstafiev]]>
The Publication of the Gulag Archipelago
