The term 'The Gulag Archipelago' refers to the network of Soviet labor camps that existed from 1923 to 1960. It was coined by Russian author and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book of the same name, which documented the horrors of the Soviet prison system. The term is derived from the Russian word 'gulag, ' which stands for 'Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.'