Book

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s harsh journey and the origins of The Gulag Archipelago begin shortly after World War 2. Solzhenitsyn had “fought in World War II but was arrested for criticizing Joseph Stalin and spent 11 years in labour camps and exile.”[1] After his sentence, Solzhenitsyn had settled in Central Russia and would eventually start working on a series of samizdats that would later be known as The Gulag Archipelago. The books itself would largely be influenced by “his own experiences from 1945 to 1953 and those related to him by 227 other survivors.”[2] Under Nikita Khrushchev there was a great “thaw” in so far as that there was a significant reduction in arrest and detainment of political prisoners and the gulag system was significantly reduced. It had appeared the worst was over for Solzhenitsyn. However, “In 1964… the political tide soon turned against Solzhenitsyn when Nikita Khrushchev fell from power and restrictions on cultural activities were reinstated.”[3] It was during this time that Solzhenitsyn made an effort to smuggle a copy of his book out to the west on the premise that his work may survive. Solzhenitsyn would get aid from William Eldridge Odom, an attaché in the American embassy. It was revealed that “From 1972 to 1974 Odom… although constantly trailed by Soviet military intelligence… nonetheless managed to smuggle out a large portion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's archive… Solzhenitsyn subsequently paid tribute to Odom's role in his memoir Invisible Allies (1995).”[4] His book was first smuggled out to West Germany and then to Paris, where it was first published in 1973. The first publication was in Russian where “in the preface… he warned that reading the work would be “very dangerous.”[5] Upon the initial release “the KGB has seized the manuscript in the Soviet Union… [and] Solzhenitsyn was charged with treason and exiled from the Soviet Union.”[6] In an Ironic twist of events, it was only after the KGB exiled Solzhenitsyn that publishers received the right to print his book in English and en masse. Solzhenitsyn “donated the proceeds from its sale to the Russian Social Fund for Persecuted Persons and Their Families.”[7]