We know a great deal about the Nazi death camps, but almost nothing about the vast network of labour camps which were once scattered across Russia - from the White Sea to the Black Sea, and from the Arctic circle to the plains of Central Asia. This work draws together the mass of memoirs published in Russia and digests the vast archival materials now available. The gulag had antecedents in Czarist Russia but took its modern form in the Soviet era. But it is wrong to believe that it came to an end with the Stalinist era. Throughout the 70 years of the Soviet Union, the camps remained the state's ultimate weapon, serving the same purpose: to punish, to isolate and, above all, to frighten.