Abstract
Soon after the publication of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago in Russian in Paris last January, it became known that the dissident Soviet historian, Roy Medvedev, had written a long review of the book in which he supported the overwhelming mass of facts cited in it but took issue with Solzhenitsyn's interpretation of the meaning of the Russian Revolution. Medvedev is a Marxist who, while not denying many of the excesses committed by the Bolshevik Party in its seizure of power, assigns to the Revolution - and particularly to Marxism - a positive and progressive role in Russian history. At the same time he is a bitter opponent of Stalinism and his best known and longest work, Let History Judge, is devoted to an exposure of Stalin and Stalinism from a Marxist point of view.
Because of his attitude to Stalinism and his hostility to the present Soviet system of government, Medvedev cannot publish his works in the Soviet Union and is forced to circulate them in samizdat (typewritten manuscript form). It is in this form that they reach the West and, in some cases, are published. The present review has been quoted in articles in The Times and the New York Times, but this is its first full publication in English. The page references are to the Russian edition of The Gulag Archipelago published by the YMCA Press in Paris.