Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn His father's given name was Isaakiy, which would normally result in the patronymic ''Isaakievich''; however, the forms ''Isaakovich'' and ''Isayevich'' both appeared in official documents, the latter becoming the accepted version. His first name is often romanized to ''Alexandr'' or ''Alexander''.}} , ; .}} (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian writer and prominent Soviet dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. His exposé writings regarding forced penal labour, Soviet crimes against humanity, the perils of totalitarianism and the Soviet bureaucracy received international attention and acclaim. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, Solzhenitsyn initially lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist, and embraced Marxism–Leninism. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a private letter. As a result of his experience in prison and the camps, he gradually became a philosophically minded Eastern Orthodox Christian.

As a result of the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn was released and exonerated. He pursued writing novels about repression in the Soviet Union and his experiences. He published his first novel, ''One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' in 1962, with approval from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which was an account of Stalinist repressions. Solzhenitsyn's last work to be published in the Soviet Union was ''Matryona's Place'' in 1963. Following the removal of Khrushchev from power, the Soviet authorities attempted to discourage Solzhenitsyn from continuing to write. He continued to work on further novels and their publication in other countries including ''Cancer Ward'' in 1966, ''In the First Circle'' in 1968, ''August 1914'' in 1971, and ''The Gulag Archipelago'' in 1973, the publication of which outraged Soviet authorities. In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and flown to West Germany. In 1976, he moved with his family to the United States, where he continued to write. In 1990, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his citizenship was restored, and four years later he returned to Russia, where he remained until his death in 2008.

In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature", ''The Gulag Archipelago'', Solzhenityn's flagship work, was a highly influential series that "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state", and sold tens of millions of copies. Provided by Wikipedia