Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Collected Works, incl. The Gulag Archipe...

* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Collected Works, incl. The Gulag Archipelago (52 books)

ALEKSANDR ISAYEVICH SOLZHENITSYN (1918–2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. His nonfiction work THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO represented "a head-on challenge to the Soviet state" and sold tens of millions of copies. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".

While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Joseph Stalin in private correspondence with another field officer. It was during these years of imprisonment and exile that Solzhenitsyn abandoned Marxism and developed the philosophical and religious positions of his later life, gradually becoming a philosophically-minded Christian as a result of his experience in prison and the camps. After Stalin's death, Solzhenitsyn was released from his exile and began writing in earnest.  

During the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn was released and exonerated. He started writing novels about his experiences and repression in the Soviet Union. His first novel, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH (1962), describes a single, gruelling day of an ordinary prisoner in a Soviet labor camp.  Its publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history since never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed. Soviet officials soon clamped down on Solzhenitsyn and other Russian artists, and henceforth his works had to be secreted out of Russia in order to be published.  These included the semi-autobiographical novel CANCER WARD (1968) and THE FIRST CIRCLE (1968), originally published in a self-censored or "distorted" version (an English translation of the full version by Harry Willetts was eventually published in 2009).

Solzhenitsyn considered THE RED WHEEL cycle of novels (1971–1991) to be his greatest work.  An ambitious cycle of novels published in four parts and consuming more than 6000 pages, each volume concentrates on a pivotal moment ("knot" or "node") in the history of the Russian Revolution like the military defeat in AUGUST 1914 (1971) and the social disintegration in MARCH 1917 (1989). Through a vast tapestry of historical figures, fictional characters, newspaper archives, and cinematic fragments, the cycle acts as a deeply philosophical inquiry into the nature of historical inevitability, individual responsibility, and the destructive momentum of radical ideologies.

The massive three-volume GULAG ARCHIPELAGO (1973-1978) has sold over thirty million copies in thirty-five languages.  It was based upon Solzhenitsyn's own experience, the testimony of 256 former prisoners ("zeks"), and Solzhenitsyn's own research into the history of the penal system.  According to fellow gulag historian Anne Applebaum, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO’S rich and varied authorial voice, its unique weaving together of personal testimony, philosophical analysis, and historical investigation, and its unrelenting indictment of communist ideology, made it one of the most consequential books of the 20th century. Time Magazine called it "the best non-fiction book of the twentieth century."

THE OAK AND THE CALF (1975) is a memoir about his attempts to publish work in his own country and remains an essential source on the life and times of the author. It contains a detailed account of the publication of One Day in the Life and the author's complex relationship with the editor-in-chief Aleksandr Tvardovsky.  It also describes Solzhenitsyn's failed attempts to publish his other early novels, the political storm caused by his 1970 Nobel Prize and his subsequent exile from the Soviet Union. A second, expanded edition of the Russian text appeared in 1996, including new material on the people who helped Solzhenitsyn in his literary tasks before his exile. The new material was translated and published in English as INVISIBLE ALLIES (1995).

In addition to the above works, this collection also includes short stories, novellas, plays, essays and other non-fiction prose.


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

== NOVELS ==

* Cancer Ward [tr. Bethell & Burg] (FSG, 2013) – ePUB / PDF
* Cancer Ward [tr. Frank] (Dial, 1968) – PDF
* The First Circle [tr. Guybon] (Collins, 1968) – PDF
* The First Circle [tr. Whitney] (Harper & Row, 1968) – PDF
* In the First Circle: The Restored Text [tr. Willetts] (HarperPerennial, 2012) – ePUB
* Lenin in Zurich [tr. Willetts] (FSG, 1976) – PDF
* One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [tr. Aitken] (Triad Panther, 1978) – PDF
* One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [tr. Hayward & Hingley] (Bantam, 1967) – ePUB / PDF
* One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [tr. Parker] (Signet, 1963) – PDF
* One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [tr. Willetts] (FSG, 2013) – ePUB

== THE RED WHEEL cycle ==

* April 1917: The Red Wheel, Node IV, Book 1 [tr. Kitson] (Notre Dame, 2025) – ePUB
* August 1914: The Red Wheel, Knot I [tr. Glenny] (FSG, 1972) – PDF
* August 1914: The Red Wheel, Knot I [tr. Willetts] (FSG, 1989) – ePUB / PDF
* March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1 [tr. Schwartz] (Notre Dame, 2017) – ePUB
* March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 2 [tr. Schwartz] (Notre Dame, 2019) – ePUB
* March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 3 [tr. Schwartz] (Notre Dame, 2021) – ePUB
* March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 4 [tr. Schwartz] (Notre Dame, 2024) – ePUB
* November 1916: The Red Wheel, Knot II [tr. Willetts] (FSG, 2014) – ePUB

== SHORT FICTION ==

* Apricot Jam and Other Stories [tr. Lantz & Solzhenitsyn] (Counterpoint, 2011) – ePUB
* For the Good of the Cause [tr. Floyd & Hayward] (Praeger, 1964) – PDF
* Stories and Prose Poems [tr. Glenny] (FSG, 1971) – ePUB / PDF
* We Never Make Mistakes: Two Short Novels [tr. Blackstock] (Norton, 1996) – PDF

== NON-FICTION ==

* A Lenten Letter to Pimen, Patriarch of All Russia [tr. Armes] (Burgess, 1972) – PDF
* A World Split Apart [tr. Alberti] (Harper & Row, 1978) – PDF
* Between Two Millstones: Book 1, 1974-1978 [tr. Constantine] (Notre Dame, 2018) – ePUB / PDF
* Between Two Millstones: Book 2, 1978-1994 [tr. Constantine] (Notre Dame, 2020) – ePUB / PDF
* Détente: Prospects for Democracy and Dictatorship (Transaction, 1980) – PDF
* Détente, Democracy, and Dictatorship, 3e (Routledge, 2017) – ePUB / PDF
* East and West [tr. Klimoff et al.] (Harper & Row, 1980) – PDF
* From Under the Rubble [tr. Scammell et al.] (Regnery, 1989) – PDF
* Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Volume 1 [tr. Whitney] (Harper & Row, 1973) – ePUB / PDF
* Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Volume 2 [tr. Whitney] (Harper & Row, 1975) – ePUB / PDF
* Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Volume 3 [tr. Willetts] (Harper & Row, 1978) – ePUB / PDF
* Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Abridged Edition [tr. Whitney & Willetts] (Harper Perennial, 2020) – ePUB
* Invisible Allies [tr. Klimoff & Nicholson] (Counterpoint, 1995) – PDF
* Letter to the Soviet Leaders [tr. Sternberg] (Harper & Row, 1975) – PDF
* Mortal Danger [tr. Nicholson & Klimoff, 2e] (Harper & Row, 1981) – PDF
* Nobel Lecture [tr. Reeve] (FSG, 1972) – PDF
* Nobel Lecture on Literature [tr. Whitney] (Harper & Row, 1972) – PDF
* The Oak and the Calf [tr. Willetts] (Harper & Row, 1980) – PDF
* Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals [tr. Klimoff] (FSG, 1991) – PDF
* Russian Question at the End of the 20th Century [tr. Y. Solzhenitsyn] (FSG, 1995) – PDF
* Two Hundred Years Together (Incorrect Library, 2017) – ePUB / PDF
* Two Hundred Years Together (Samizdat Edition 2.0, 2019) – PDF
* Voice of Freedom (AFL-CIO, 1975) – PDF
* Warning to the West [tr. Coulter & Martin] (Vintage UK, 2018) – ePUB
* We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches (Notre Dame, 2025) – ePUB

== PLAYS & POETRY ==

* Candle in the Wind [tr. Armes & Hudgins] (Minnesota, 1973) – PDF
* Love-Girl and the Innocent [tr. Bethell & Burg] (Bantam, 1971) – PDF
* Prussian Nights: A Poem [tr. Conquest] (FSG, 1977) – PDF
* Three Plays [tr. Rapp et al.] (FSG, 1986) – PDF

== ANTHOLOGY ==

* Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005 [ed. Ericson & Mahoney] (ISI, 2006) – PDF


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