%0 Journal Article %T Soviet Criminal Law in the Eyes of a Gulag Prisoner: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Lecture on Criminal Law in Light of The Gulag Archipelago %A Lityński, Adam %J Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History %V Volume 15 (2022) %R 10.4467/20844131KS.22.040.16737 %N Volume 15, Issue 4 %P 577-591 %K Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, - Nobel Prize, criminal law of the USSR %@ 2084-4115 %D 2022 %U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/kshpp/article/sowieckie-prawo-karne-w-oczach-lagiernika-aleksandra-solzenicyna-wyklad-o-prawie-karnym-w-swietle-archipelagu-gulag %X In his monumental non-fiction book, The Gulag Archipelago, Nobel Prize winning author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn illustrates real events in Soviet labor camps in literary form. The depiction of EVIL is shocking. The totalitarian Soviet regime subjected millions of people to a horrific fate. As is gener- ally well-known, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a Soviet concentration camp. Mass terror was the essence of Soviet totalitarianism. Solzhenitsyn included a lecture on Soviet criminal law in his book, stressing the importance of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union in authorizing this terrorism. Solzhenitsyn himself was not a lawyer. However, his conclusions were very accurate. Article 58 of the Criminal Code, which consisted of seventeen paragraphs, defined “counter-revolutionary offenses”. They were obviously punished most rticle 58 became a weapon of terror for the Soviet authorities, who used it convict millions of innocent people.