<P> The Gulag Archipelago ( Russian : Архипелаг ГУЛАГ , Arkhipelag GULAG ) is a book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the Soviet forced labor camp system . The three - volume book is a narrative relying on eyewitness testimony and primary research material , as well as the author 's own experiences as a prisoner in a gulag labor camp . Written between 1958 and 1968 , it was published in the West in 1973 and , thereafter , it was circulated in samizdat ( underground publication ) form in the Soviet Union until its appearance in the Russian literary journal , Novy Mir , in 1989 , in which a third of the work was published in three issues . </P>
what was the main setting of aleksandr solzhenitsyn 's gulag archipelago
Soviet forced labor camp system