The First Circle appeared in unauthorised printings in 1968 in Belgrade, Frankfurt, New York, and London. The present edition was most likely taken from a samizdat manuscript smuggled out to the West for publication, and then smuggled back into the Soviet Union. The text had been accepted by the editors of the periodical Novyi mir but was never published in the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn later made several amendments, including changing the title to V kruge pervom.