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.

Except of course in Communist China, Notth Korea and Cuba (oh, and modern Russia these days)