Prior to Archipelago’s release, Americans and Western Europeans had been exposed to only glimpses of communist inhumanity, mostly from the few survivors who had escaped their dystopias by fortitude and fortune. But their voices were seldom heard, drowned out by a cacophony of Soviet apologists who insisted socialist coercion represented the ideal manner for ordering other people around. Central planning is benevolent, you see.

Solzhenitsyn tore the curtain away from this façade and forced the “progressive” elite to confront the ugly truth: Their prosperous socialist utopia was a cruel and barbaric sham. …

Solzhenitsyn labored quietly and clandestinely to compose The Gulag Archipelago from 1958 to 1967. These writings were based on his observations and testimonies from former prisoners in a magnum opus collection. He carefully maintained several copies, both internally and abroad, but because many of the people he interviewed remained alive and vulnerable, he declined to publish the contents. In the afterward, he apologizes for his inability to properly edit the materials because he didn’t dare assemble all the text in a single location where all of it could be confiscated.

[That alone speaks volumes about the nature of communist and Marxist-based governments. Repression is the inevitable result and inevitably becomes its constant as central planning on Marxist principles inevitably fails. F.A. Hayek wrote the definitive analysis of this cycle in “The Road to Serfdom,” a book which has unfortunately retained its relevance thanks to the Left’s refusal to admit the failures of Marxism and central control of economies. — Ed]