Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Soviet dissident writer and Nobel laureate. Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, on December 11, 1918, the son of a cossack landowner and a teacher, and was educated at the University of Rostov. He served in the Soviet army from 1941 to 1945, when he was sentenced to eight years in labour camps for anti-Stalinist remarks written to a friend. Exiled to Kazakhstan, he taught mathematics and wrote, and survived cancer. His prison experiences were the background for his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962; trans. 1963), which was published in the leading Soviet literary periodical Novy Mir (New World) and established his name overnight. The book caused a sensation both abroad and in the Soviet Union. Two short novels appeared in book form as We Never Make Mistakes (1963; trans. 1971) and another, For the Good of the Cause, in 1964. In 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union for denouncing official censorship that had suppressed some of his writings. He continued to work, however—and was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature—publishing in foreign editions The First Circle (1968) and Cancer Ward (in various editions; 1968-1969). August 1914, the first volume of his roman fleuve The Red Wheel, appeared in 1971. It was revised and expanded in 1989. The second volume, November 1916, appeared in Russian in 1993 and in English in 1999.

Solzhenitsyn was deported to West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany) and deprived of his Soviet citizenship in February 1974 upon publication of The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956. This massively documented exposé of the Soviet prison system, terrorism, and secret police, was first published in France (1973), and appeared shortly afterwards in English. The Gulag Archipelago 2 and 3 were published in 1975 and 1978 respectively. He travelled to the United States in 1975, where he decided to settle. Works written in exile included The Mortal Danger: Misconceptions About Soviet Russia and the Threat to America (1980) and his memoirs, The Oak and the Calf (1980).

Solzhenitsyn's Soviet citizenship was officially restored in 1990 and in 1994 he finally returned to Russia where he was given a hero's welcome by the people. His criticism of the West and castigation of his fellow countrymen continued. Despite this he attended a symbolic meeting with President Vladimir Putin in September 2000 to discuss the future of Russia, and Putin later visited him at his home in 2007 to award him the State Prize of the Russian Federation. Following his return, he published several works, among them Invisible Allies (1996) and Two Hundred Years Together (2001)—although they met with less interest in the West than before. He died at his home near Moscow on August 3, 2008. The Solzhenitsyn Prize for Russian literature was established in 1997.