About The Author
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN (1918- )
The favorite subject of exiled Soviet novelist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn is his homeland. Solzhenitsyn has chronicled the story of a world unto itself, the Soviet prison system.
Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born on Dec. 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Russia. After graduating with a degree in mathematics from the University of Rostov-on-Don, Solzhenitsyn served in the Red Army artillery in World War II. In 1945 he was arrested for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a letter and was imprisoned for eight years. While imprisoned, Solzhenitsyn worked in a labor camp and a prison research institute and first began to write poetry. In prison he was also diagnosed as having cancer. After his release on the day of Stalin's death, Solzhenitsyn was forced to spend three years in exile.
His first book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published in Russian in 1962, tells the story of a day in the life of an inmate in a Soviet labor camp. The book brought Solzhenitsyn instant recognition. The First Circle and Cancer Ward, both published abroad in 1968, made Solzhenitsyn an internationally famous figure.
Solzhenitsyn's criticism of government repression led to a ban on publication of his work in the Soviet Union after the mid-1960s. His books continued to be published abroad, however, and were circulated underground inside the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1970 but was afraid to leave the Soviet Union to receive it for fear that the government would not allow him to reenter the country when he returned.
In 1974, shortly after the first parts of The Gulag Archipelago were published in Paris, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and tried for treason. Exiled from the Soviet Union, he settled in Switzerland and finally took possession of his Nobel prize. He later settled in the United States. In 1980 he published The Mortal Danger in English. Because of changes in official Soviet policy, most of his works once again became available to Soviet readers in 1989. In December 1989 Solzhenitsyn refused a Soviet offer to reinstate his citizenship.
--Courtesy of Compton's Learning Center
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