In the Claws of the GPU (Polish: Siedem lat w szponach GPU) is the first-ever book-length witness account of the Soviet Gulag (including the first Gulag Solovki prison camp), written by Francišak Aljachnovič, a playwright, an ethnic Belarusian, a Belarusian national activist, and a citizen of interwar Poland (in the writer's Polish documents, his name was spelled Franciszek Olechnowicz). After his release from Gulag and return to Poland in 1933, Aljachnovič immediately wrote the book in three language versions, namely, in Belarusian, Polish and Russian. In 1934 the Polish-language version was serialized in the daily Słowo, published in Wilno. In 1934-1935 the Russian-language version (in the pre-1917 spelling) was serialized in the Russian émigré newspapers Vozrozhdenie in Paris, and also