TEHRAN-The Persian translation of the second volume of “The Gulag Archipelago” by the Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has been released in the country.

Translated by Ehsan Sanaeil Ardakani, the book has been published by Nashre Markaz publishing house in 718 pages, Mehr reported.

“The Gulag Archipelago” is a three-volume series written between 1958 and 1968. It was first published in 1973 and was translated into English and French the following year.

It presents a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system, through a narrative which was constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner.

Following its publication, the book was initially circulated in samizdat underground publication in the Soviet Union until its appearance in the literary journal Novy Mir in 1989, in which a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, “The Gulag Archipelago” has been officially published in Russia.

The book is Solzhenitsyn's attempt to compile a literary-historical record of the vast system of prisons and labor camps that came into being shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 and that underwent an enormous expansion during the rule of Stalin from 1924 to 1953.

Various sections of the three volumes describe the arrest, interrogation, conviction, transportation, and imprisonment of the Gulag's victims by Soviet authorities over four decades. The work mingles historical exposition and Solzhenitsyn's own autobiographical accounts with the voluminous personal testimony of other inmates that he collected and committed to memory during his imprisonment.

Upon publication of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was immediately attacked in the Soviet press. Despite the intense interest in his fate that was shown in the West, he was arrested and charged with treason on February 12, 1974, and was exiled from the Soviet Union the following day.

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