Alexander Solzhenitsyn
1918–2008 · Russian (Kislovodsk/Vermont/Moscow) · Soviet / Post-Soviet Russia
Known for: Chronicler of the Gulag—One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago. Nobel Prize 1970
Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945 for criticizing Stalin in a private letter and spent eight years in labor camps. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) was the first authorized account of the camps. The Gulag Archipelago, smuggled to the West, exposed the entire Soviet penal system.
He was expelled from the USSR in 1974, lived in Vermont for 18 years, and returned to Russia in 1994. He was morally absolutist, prophetic, fearlessly brave, and sometimes cranky and reactionary. His courage in documenting the Gulag changed world opinion of the Soviet Union.
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