‘Gulag Archipelago’ now required reading in Russia

MOSCOW — Russia has made a once-banned book recounting the brutality and despair of the Soviet Gulag required reading in the country’s schools, the Education Ministry said in a statement today.

The ministry said excerpts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1973 epic “The Gulag Archipelago” have been added to the curriculum for high-school students.

The book was banned by Soviet censors, sparking Solzhenitsyn’s retreat into exile.

The decision announced today was taken due to “the vital historical and cultural heritage on the course of 20th-century domestic history” contained in Solzhenitsyn’s work, the ministry said.

The move comes despite Russian moves over the past decade to restore some Soviet symbols and, liberals say, glorify Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

It was not immediately clear whether the addition of the book would apply to the current academic year, which began Sept. 1.

It is thought over a million Russians perished in the Gulag, a sprawling secret network of prison and labor camps created by Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin and expanded by Stalin.

“The Gulag Archipelago” was published in the West in 1973, and circulated in the Soviet Union via amateur publishing houses thereafter.

Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Natalya, said in July that the work should be included in the curriculum, though not in its multi-volume entirety.