I find Solzhenitsyn's style to be a bit stilted. A far better writer on the Gulag topic, both from a stylistic and personal experience standpoint, is Varlam Shalamov, whose Kolyma Tales (Колымские рассказы) are considered some of the best on the topic.

Solzhenitsyn's story is set in Kazakhstan, which was not as brutally cold as Kolyma or Magadan, and Solzhenitsyn never saw the worst of the worst that the Gulag system had to offer. Shalamov saw the people coming back from uranium mines.

Either way, Solzhenitsyn has written other works which are better. In the First Circle (В Круге Первом) is probably the best.