This landmark book uncovers for the first time in detail one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century: the vast system of Soviet camps that were responsible for the deaths of countless millions. ” Gulag” is the only major history in any language to draw together the mass of memoirs & writings on the Soviet camps that have been published in Russia & the West. Using these, as well as her own original research in NKVD archives & interviews with survivors, Anne Applebaum has written a fully documented history of the camp system: from its origins under the tsars, to its colossal expansion under Stalin`s reign of terror, its zenith in the late 1940s & eventual collapse in the era of glasnost. It is a gigantic feat of investigation, synthesis & moral reckoning.