Shame much of what he wrote down was a lie, or at the very least fiction. Which wasn't necessary, because the system was terrible enough. The Gulag Archipelago is useful as a source for life within the system, but cant be taken as truth. His wife is quoted as saying the book was meant as fiction, but the West took it as fact (i'm sure they had no good reason at all to promote the shit out of an anti-Soviet book). Solzhenitsyn also praised Franco and his dictatorship, was fiercely anti-Semitic and would have preferred Hitler winning the war against the Soviets. So yeah, stand-up guy overall. Guess he simply preferred a different dictatorship than the one he to to live in.
Current historical analysis places the gulag system in a different light, with political opponents being a minor part of the population, sentences being much shorter (less than 5 years) and general conditions being better than described in the book. Solzhenitsyn talks about 50 million prisoners with a peak population of 14 million, while current figures are somewhere around 14-18 million prisoners in total, with 2 million peak population at it's height. Still really high, but really, compared to America in this day and age not that shocking.
Current historical analysis places the gulag system in a different light, with political opponents being a minor part of the population, sentences being much shorter (less than 5 years) and general conditions being better than described in the book. Solzhenitsyn talks about 50 million prisoners with a peak population of 14 million, while current figures are somewhere around 14-18 million prisoners in total, with 2 million peak population at it's height. Still really high, but really, compared to America in this day and age not that shocking.