Soviet prison camps were a criminal system of oppression that was widespread and long-lasting. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn named it the Gulag Archipelago.Soviet prison camps were a criminal system of oppression that was widespread and long-lasting. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn named it the Gulag Archipelago.Soviet prison camps were a criminal system of oppression that was widespread and long-lasting. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn named it the Gulag Archipelago.