Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago“ is required reading for Russian high school students. The book is a first-hand account describing the horrors of the repressive Soviet labor camp system that resulted in the deaths of as many as 10 million people over several decades (the Soviet Union’s figures were far lower and are widely disputed).
Gulags have become synonymous with dictator Joseph Stalin’s rule over the Soviet Union, but the camps were first started in 1918—right after Vladimir Lenin took power and began the Russian Civil War. Solzhenitsyn’s account, published in 1973, was widely seen as a refutation that the Gulag system was a Stalinist, rather than communist, creation. The prison camp system was created under Lenin, though Stalin greatly expanded it, coming up with the name “Gulag” in 1930.
