Like its author, Solzhenitsyn's most important book has survived the most harrowing of trials. Written while running “from one hiding place to another”, it also cost the life of one of the writer’s “invisible” assistant typists. This first edition published in Paris is the result of remarkable collective courage.

While the book quickly reached international success thanks to its translations, Solzhenitsyn was still in the USSR when the first edition came out. The few Russian recipients of inscribed copies are even more than readers the inheritors of a shared history of freedom to be passed on to future generations.

 
Solzhenitsyn began the writing of The Gulag Archipelago in 1958 and finished it “in the greatest secrecy” (Solzhenitsyn 2001, vol. II, p. 718). In September 1965, when the KGB confiscated his archives at a friend's in Moscow, Solzhenitsyn managed to keep the completed chapters of Archipelago and his drafts safe. He continued to write running “from one hiding place to another”, without ever being able to have the whole text in front of him. But in 1973, Solzhenitsyn no longer had a choice: the KGB had just got their hands on one of the hidden typescripts of his Archipelago kept in Leningrad by an “invisible” assistant, who had broken the rule of burning old drafts. Released after days of inquisition, she was found hanged in her home. Solzhenitsyn immediately gave his friend Nikita Struve director of YMCA-Press permission to publish the first volume (comprising the first and second parts) in Paris. It appeared in bookshops on 28 December 1973, and the New York Times published excerpts the very next day; Georges Nivat (Solzhenitsyn et la France, 2021), however, dates publication from 20 December, the same as our copy's imprint. The book was quickly translated into English and French and two months later led to Solzhenitsyn's expulsion from the USSR.

During his US exile the Nobel Peace Prize winner discreetly signed several translated copies of his great political work. The recipient's name is rarely mentioned, as a sign of the ever-present possibility of repression. Genuine, personally-addressed inscriptions are extremely rare, even more so on first Russian edition copies. 

 
A Jewish émigré journalist and writer, Yossman worked for the BBC's Russian Service for 20 years under the name Sam Jones. Following Solzhenitsyn's example, Jones published his own memoirs in the book Šaltojo karo samdinys (Cold War Mercenary), about his childhood marked by poverty and conflict in post-war Vilnius. He is known for introducing Western music and culture to the Soviet people, and in January 1989 hosted Paul McCartney on his rock music radio show “Babushkin Sunduk” (Grandma's Trunk) “which is still remembered by millions of people in the former USSR” (Lithuanian Jewish Community). Yossman is also considered the father of “Russian song”, a popular musical genre developed by Soviet émigrés in the United States. It was probably on the occasion of his American trip to interview Russian song artists (Willi Tokarev, Shufutinsky, Luba Uspenskaya), that he received this precious copy from a then-exiled Solzhenitsyn. Signed first edition copies of this masterpiece are extremely rare.
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