The article is devoted to the philosophical fairy-tale “Rabbits and boa constrictors” by Fazil Iskander. The paper observes allegorical images of the fairy-tale and their connection with the images of “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn. Written several years earlier than “Rabbits and boa constrictors”, “Archipelago” became the one of the fairy-tale’s sources. Referring to this source, we can make the interpretation of Iskander’s text, which is written in Aesopian language, more clearly, and also trace the origin of the metaphor “rabbits and boa constrictors”, which is entrenched in political vocabulary of Russian intelligentsia