The style of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s most important work, The Gulag Archipelago is highly varied. It includes the hatred towards totalitarian regime, the deep empathy towards the sufferers, as well as painful confessions and sincere self-punishment for his own past, etc.: all this is conveyed to the reader in a direct conversational language, which is often similar to the linguistic register close to live speech. One of the most significant means to maintain this directness is the frequent use of idioms and proverbs in the three-volume novel: the article introduces their structure and function in the novels, including the difficulties in translation due to the phrasemes.