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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer who was imprisoned for his criticism of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and later exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile.
He was born Aleksandr Isaakovich Solzhenitsyn on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Southern Russia. He was born six months after the tragic death of his father, who was an Army artillery officer. His mother spoke English and French, she encouraged Solzhenitsyn's interest in literature and science. Since 1937 he was writing chapters for his book about the First World War. In 1936-1941 he studied at the Rostov State University, graduating with degrees in mathematics and physics. In 1939
* 1941 he also took correspondence courses in literature from the
Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History.
During the Second World War Solzhenitsyn served as an artillery captain in the Red Army. He was involved in major battles at the front as a commander of an artillery unit, and was twice decorated for courage. In February of 1945 he was fighting against the Nazis on the territory of East Prussia. There he was arrested by the Soviet secret service, because they opened all his private letters and found one line critical of Joseph Stalin. Solzhenitsyn was tried in his absence by a three-man tribunal of the Soviet security police and was sentenced to 8 years of prison just for describing Joseph Stalin as a "man with mustache" in a private letter to a friend.
Solzhenitsyn spent 8 years in Soviet Gulag prison-camps. There he was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach. He was forced to work as a miner, a bricklayer, a foundry-man, and as a mathematician. His mathematical skills really saved his life, because he was released from prison-camp and was eventually used in the secret "sharashka" prison-camp for scientists. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 he was sent to a Tashkent hospital for tumor removal and radiation therapy. He described his experience of the treatment and recovery from cancer in his novel 'Cancer Ward'. Solzhenitsyn was secretly writing a thorough account of his life in prison-camps. That became the content of his first official publication in 1962. He gave Aleksandr Tvardovsky his autobiographical story 'One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' which was allowed for publication after personal permission from Nikita Khrushchev. That one sensational publication gave Solzhenitsyn a brief chance to publish one more small work during the "Thaw" that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev was dismissed by Leonid Brezhnev and neo-Stalinist hard liners. Solzhenitsyn fell under suspicion and was in danger again. At that time he took a risk and arranged that his manuscripts of autobiographical books 'First Circle' and 'Cancer Ward' were secretly smuggled out of the Soviet Union, and published in the West. But at home, his writings were confiscated by the KGB in 1965 and banned. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but could not go outside of the Soviet Union, and could not receive the award until several years later. Meanwhile he was wanted by the KGB, because he was officially restricted from being in Moscow and was secretly living in the dacha of Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya.
Solzhenitsyn was one of the leading dissidents in the Soviet Union, and was active against the Soviet Communist regime. His main work 'Gulag Archipelago' (1973), being inspired by the academic work of Anton Chekhov titled 'Island of Sakhalin' (1895). After the publication of 'Gulag Archipelago' abroad in 1973, he was arrested again, and charged with "anti-Soviet" treason, then exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He lived mostly in Cavendish, Vermont, USA, until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then he was invited by the new Russian president Boris Yeltsin and his Russian citizenship was restored. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 and was granted a suburban house in Moscow. His wife and three sons remained American citizens.
Back in Moscow, Solzhenitsyn enjoyed full recognition and wide publication of all his works. He was an active and important figure in Russian society, because of his independent position and sharp criticism of the declining state of affairs in Russia. He refused to take award from the Russian president Boris Yeltsin. His weekly TV show was canceled. His provocative and controversial two-volume history of Russian-Jewish relations ignited debates, which included little praise, but substantial criticism from both sides. His autobiographical novel 'First Circle' was made into a TV-movie and shown on the Russian national TV in 2006.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 89, on August 3, 2008, at his home near Moscow. His death caused a considerable mourning in Russia, especially among the Russian conservatives and Orthodox Christians. Solzhenitsyn received a state funeral and was laid to rest in Donskoy Convent cemetery in Moscow, Russia.
