The Gulag Archipelago

Written between 1958 and 1968 by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the three-volume work of nonfiction examines the Gulag, the system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. He assembled its narrative from interviews, diaries, legal documents, reports and statements, along with his own years as a prisoner. One strand traces the camps from Lenin's decrees after the October Revolution, through Stalin's purges and show trials of the 1930s, to Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956. Another follows the usual path of a zek, or inmate, from arrest and trial through transport, labor gangs, camp strikes such as the Kengir uprising, exile and possible release. Solzhenitsyn places the origins of the system with Lenin rather than Stalin.

Jordan B. Peterson included it on his book list.