The Gulag Archipelago

Why it’s on the list: Solzhenitsyn’s “experiment in literary investigation” — his vast history of the Soviet forced-labour camp system, built from his own imprisonment and the testimony of hundreds of other prisoners, and the book that got him expelled from the Soviet Union.

Where I heard about it

• The Invention of Russia and Alexander Solzhenitsyn — both discuss it by name as the trigger for his expulsion and for the “Live Not by Lies” letter.
• Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, under Marxism and Collective Psychology, March 2026.

Connections

• The Invention of Russia — where this book is cited.
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn — where this book is cited.