The book charts the history of the Gulag organization from its beginnings under Lenin and the Solovki prison camp to the construction of the White Sea Canal through its explosive growth in the Great Terror and the Second World War , and tracks its diminution following the death of Joseph Stalin and its final closure in the 1980s . A large portion of the book is devoted to covering lives and deaths of camp inmates , including their arrest , interrogation , trial , transportation , the details of the rigors of their working and living conditions , the privations of starvation and disease , and the circumstances of their deaths . The book draws heavily on Soviet-era archives and on the diaries and writings of camp survivors
Great Terror
Great Purge
Gulag: A History