The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For a contemporary reader, the book brilliantly evokes a mentality which no longer exists, and which is increasingly difficult to describe or explain: the atmosphere of constant fear; the constant temptation of betrayal; the ubiquity of secret police; the reversal of “normal” values; the generalized cruelty that permeated the culture of the Gulag, and of the Soviet Union itself.