Can there be a duty to read a work of literature? Most people I’ve met who are at least aware of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s masterwork The Gulag Archipelago know that they should read the book. They ...

MOSCOW — Russia has made a once-banned book recounting the brutality and despair of the Soviet Gulag required reading in the country’s schools, the Education Ministry said in a statement today. The ...

Today the word “gulag” is often used figuratively, but in the Soviet Union the Gulag—an acronym designating the system of forced labor camps—was all too real. Millions of people lived and died in the ...

When the doorbell to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Moscow apartment rang on February 12, 1974, his wife, Natalia, cracked open the door to see who was outside. Realizing it was the KGB, she immediately ...

In this lecture delivered by University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson, he explores 'The Gulag Archipelago' by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (buy on Amazon or listen to the audiobook for ...

Although more than three decades have now passed since the winter of 1974, when unbound, hand-typed, samizdat manuscripts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago first began circulating around ...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in West Germany following his deportation from the Soviet Union in February 1974 Public domain via Wikimedia Commons By 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was already “Russia’s ...

Excerpt from the introduction to the newly-abridged Russian version of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Sanya, as the boy was called at home, read a great deal and, strange to say, at ...

Come for the presents. Stay for the baggage.

Wilson T. Bell receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Thompson Rivers University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR. Thompson Rivers ...