Years of life: from 12/11/1918 to 08/03/2008
Soviet, Russian writer, prose writer, playwright, publicist, public figure. Laureate Nobel Prize on literature. Dissident. He played one of the key roles in exposing the Stalinist repressions.
Born in Kislovodsk. Father came from peasant family, but managed to enter the Moscow University at the philological department. He volunteered for the front during the First World War. He died in 1918 as a result of an accident six months before the birth of his son. After the death of his father, his mother worked as a typist and stenographer. In 1924, Solzhenitsyn and his mother moved to Rostov-on-Don, where the writer graduated from high school (1936) and entered the mathematical department of Rostov University. In 1939-1941, Solzhenitsyn also studied at the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature. In 1941, after graduating with honors from Rostov University, Solzhenitsyn was drafted into the army as an ordinary convoy (due to poor health). In 1942, Solzhenitsyn was sent to the artillery school. After graduating from college, Solzhenitsyn, with the rank of lieutenant, was appointed commander of a reconnaissance artillery battery. During the war he was awarded orders Patriotic War and Red Star, received the rank of captain. 
In February 1945, Solzhenitsyn was arrested at the front, transferred to Moscow, and on July 27, in absentia, by decision of the OSO (Special Meeting of the NKVD), he was sentenced to 8 years in the camps. The reason for the arrest and accusation was Solzhenitsyn's correspondence with a friend (N. Vitkevich), in which the writer spoke disapprovingly of Stalin, as well as sketches of stories seized from Solzhenitsyn during a search. After a short stay in mixed labor camps, Solzhenitsyn (as a mathematician) ends up in the system of “sharashkas” (special institutions for prisoners). He spends three years (1947-1950) in Marfinskaya sharashka near Moscow. Later, Solzhenitsyn admitted that if not for this, he would hardly have survived all 8 years of imprisonment. In May 1950, Solzhenitsyn, due to a quarrel with the bosses of the "sharashka", was sent to Steplag - a special camp "for political" in Ekibastuz, worked as a laborer, bricklayer, foundry worker. In the winter of 1952, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, he was operated on in the camp. On March 5, 1953, Solzhenitsyn was released from prison and sent into exile to a settlement “forever” in Kok-Terek (southern Kazakhstan). At the end of 1953, a cancerous tumor that had not been treated in the camp made itself felt, and in 1954 he was being treated at the Tashkent clinic. Until 1956 he taught at Kok-Terek high school mathematics and physics. In 1956, Solzhenitsyn's exile was canceled (he was fully rehabilitated in 1957) and he returned to Russia (first to the Vladimir region, then to Ryazan). In Ryazan, the writer worked school teacher from 1957 to 1962. In 1961, Solzhenitsyn gave A. Tvardovsky (at that time the editor of the magazine " New world”) the manuscript of his story “Sch-854”. Tvardovsky, after numerous revisions, personally seeks permission from Khrushchev to print the story under the title “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The story receives an extraordinary public outcry. Solzhenitsyn instantly became famous, received many letters from writers, public figures, but mostly from former prisoners. Until 1964, several more stories by Solzhenitsyn were published in Novy Mir, and the writer began work on The Gulag Archipelago. The editors of the Novy Mir magazine and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art nominated One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for the Lenin Prize for 1964, but civil position Solzhenitsyn already seemed to the authorities "too brave" and he was not given the award. The process of "cooling" of power towards Solzhenitsyn begins, his works already with difficulty manage to overcome censorship. In response, Solzhenitsyn transferred his work to samizdat. After Brezhnev came to power, the KGB began open actions against the writer, which ended in 1965 with the confiscation of his entire archive. However, Solzhenitsyn enters into an open confrontation with the authorities - he meets with writers, journalists (mostly foreign), gives his works to samizdat. 
In 1967, he sent out the famous "Letter to the Congress" of the Writers' Union of the USSR, which became widely known among the Soviet intelligentsia and in the West. In the West, his works are published in increasing numbers, and in 1969 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. After that, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union, and an active campaign against the writer began. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize, and he increasingly sharply declares his Orthodox-patriotic convictions and actively criticizes the authorities. The KGB could not arrest him, as the Soviet government feared a global outcry, and Solzhenitsyn was asked to leave the USSR. The writer refused. It was impossible to tolerate Solzhenitsyn any longer, and on February 12, 1974, he was arrested, accused of treason and deprived of Soviet citizenship, and then expelled from the USSR. The archive and military awards of the writer were secretly taken abroad by the assistant of the US military attache, William Odom. After traveling around Europe in 1976, Solzhenitsyn settled in the United States in the town of Cavendish (Vermont). All the time in exile, the writer was actively engaged in both literary and social activities. Solzhenitsyn gave lectures, created the "Russian public fund assistance to the persecuted and their families" to help political prisoners in the USSR, published a large number of works. With the advent of perestroika, the official attitude in the USSR to Solzhenitsyn's work and activities began to change, many of his works were published, in 1990 the writer was returned to Soviet citizenship and awarded the State Prize of the USSR. In 1994, the writer and his family returned to Russia, his work received public acceptance. By personal order of President Boris Yeltsin, he was presented with the Sosnovka-2 state dacha in Troitse-Lykovo, where the writer mostly spent last years own life. At the same time, Solzhenitsyn continued to work actively. He publishes his works, establishes literary prize name, speaks in the press and on television, actively expresses his views on the historical path of Russia. Solzhenitsyn is awarded a number of awards and prizes, he is elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. In 2006, a 30-volume collection of his works began to appear. Alexander Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008, at the age of 90, in his home in Troitse-Lykovo from acute heart failure.
The real patronymic of Solzhenitsyn is Isaakievich. The variant "Isaevich" appeared in the writer's passport as a result of a passport officer's mistake. This error was carried over to all subsequent documents.
On August 23, 1973, the KGB detained one of the writer's assistants E. Voronyanskaya. During the interrogation, she gave out the location of one copy of the manuscript of the Gulag Archipelago and, returning home, hanged herself. This event prompted Solzhenitsyn to allow the publication of Archipelago in the West.
In 1998, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, but refused the award, saying: "I cannot accept the award from the supreme power that has brought Russia to its current disastrous state."
Writer, Author Kolyma stories"Wrote about Solzhenitsyn:" The activity of Solzhenitsyn is the activity of a businessman, aimed narrowly at personal success with all the provocative accessories of such activity ... Solzhenitsyn is a writer of Pisarzhevsky's scale, the level of talent direction is approximately the same.
Writer's Awards
Combat awards
Order of the Patriotic War II degree (1943)
Order of the Red Star (1944)
Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War" (1957)
Domestic awards and prizes
State Prize of the USSR (1990) refused the award
Big Golden medal named after M.V. Lomonosov (1998)
Order of the Holy Prince Daniel of Moscow (1998)
Order of St. Andrew the First-Called (1998) refused the award
(2006)
Prize "For Honor and Dignity" (2008) posthumously
Foreign and international awards
(1970)
Award of the Union of Italian Journalists "Golden Cliche" (1974, Italy)
Templeton Prize for Excellence in Research or Discovery in the Spiritual Life (1983, UK)
American National Arts Club Literary Award (1993, USA)
Literary Prize. Brancati (1995, Italy)
Grand Prize of the French Academy of Moral-Political Sciences (2000, France)
Order of Saint Sava, 1st class (2004, Serbia)
Prize of the Zhivko and Milica Topalovic Foundation (2007, Serbia)
Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania (2008, Romania) posthumously
Membership in scientific organizations
Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1969, USA)
Honorary Member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1969, USA)
Active member Russian Academy Sciences (1997, Russia)
Honorary Doctor of Moscow state university named after M.V. Lomonosov. (2003, Russia)
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn - Soviet and Russian writer, publicist and publicist political figure. Thanks to his works, he helped the world to realize what kind of horrors were happening in the Gulags, Soviet labor camps. In particular, Solzhenitsyn described his experiences in the short story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and the art-historical essay "The Gulag Archipelago" - two of his main works. We offer you a list best books writer and most deep quotes Solzhenitsyn about life, man and Russia.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was not just a brilliant writer, but a passionate follower of his work. He considered it his moral duty to write down true story USSR, despite the pressure of the totalitarian regime.
In 1974 the writer was expelled and Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia only in 1994. Before his deportation from the USSR Alexander Solzhenitsyn awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his lecture during the award ceremony, the writer quoted a Russian proverb: "One word of truth will outweigh the whole world." It was these words that succinctly described Solzhenitsyn's literary credo. In an authoritarian country, Solzhenitsyn, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, became an important source of spiritual help for his vast circle of readers.
THE BEST WORKS OF ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN WITH QUOTATIONS
Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the Nobel Prize ceremony
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH (1962)
First published in 1962 in the Novy Mir magazine, the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” became a classic. modern literature. This is a story about Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a labor camp prisoner, a graphic description of his struggle to preserve dignity in the face of communist oppression. "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" is a cruel, devastating portrait of the whole world of Stalinist forced camps, of millions of people who have abandoned hope for the future. The book will show you how important sometimes a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup is when safety, warmth and food are the only thing that worries you in life.
Frame from the film "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1970, Norway - Great Britain)
Reading "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" you find yourself in a world of imprisonment, cruelty, hard physical labor and cold, where every day you have to stand against heavy natural conditions and inhuman system. This story is one of the most amazing literary documents, which arose in the USSR, and largely influenced its further development. This story confirmed Solzhenitsyn's prestige as a literary genius, whose talent is on par with Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy.
- Work is like a stick, there are two ends in it: if you do it for people, give quality, if you do it for the boss, show off.
- The old month God crumbles into stars.
- Who is the prisoner main enemy? Another prisoner. If the zeks had not quarreled with each other, the authorities would not have had power over them.
- The brigadier is a force, but the convoy is a stronger force.
- Geniuses do not tailor the interpretation to the taste of tyrants!
Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"
ARCHIPELAGO GULAG (1973-1975)
Relying on own experience conclusions and references, as well as to the testimonies of more than 200 other prisoners and materials from Soviet archives, Alexander Solzhenitsyn depicts for us the entire apparatus of Soviet repression. It is, in a way, a state within a state where government has unlimited power. Through portraits of almost Shakespearean victims - men, women, children - we are confronted with the work of the secret police ... and with something more.
The Gulag Archipelago is considered Solzhenitsyn's greatest masterpiece. This is a canvas consisting of many details, on which the author collected camps, prisons, transit centers and the KGB, informants, spies and investigators. But the most important thing to see here is the heroism at the heart of the Stalinist regime, where the key to survival lies not in hope, but in despair.
Gulag Archipelago on the map
- The universe has as many centers as there are living beings in it.
- But the line separating good and evil crosses the heart of every person. And who will destroy a piece of his heart?.. During the life of one heart, this line moves on it, sometimes being squeezed by joyful evil, sometimes freeing space for flourishing good.
- A person who is not internally prepared for violence is always weaker than the rapist.
- Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty
- And until there is an independent country public opinion— there is no guarantee that all the multimillion-dollar causeless destruction will not be repeated again, that it will not begin any night, every night – this very night, the first after today.
- Whether we are a great nation, we must prove not by the vastness of the territory, not by the number of peoples under our care, but by the greatness of deeds.
- The Panama Canal, 80 km long, took 28 years to build, the Suez Canal, 160 km long, took 10 years, the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 227 km long, took less than 2 years, don't you want?
Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's artistic and historical essay "The Gulag Archipelago"
CANCER CASE (1967)
One of the greatest allegorical masterpieces of world literature. " cancer corps” is at the same time a study of people who are sick incurable disease, and a magnificent dissection of a cancer-stricken state through the prism of the author's deep compassion for the people who find themselves inside this mousetrap. Almost all the action takes place in the thirteenth ("cancer") building of the hospital, where patients discuss among themselves various aspects of life.
In 1964, this story was banned from publication, but nevertheless, along with "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", "Cancer Ward" opened the eyes of the world to the atrocities that were happening right in front of them, awakened his conscience. As Independent correspondent Robert Service wrote after reading it: “In his struggle against communism Solzhenitsyn preferred the rapier to the cudgel."
- If you do not know how to use a minute, you will waste an hour, and a day, and your whole life.
- The hardest life is not at all for those who drown in the sea, dig in the ground or look for water in the deserts. The hardest life is for someone who every day, leaving the house, beats his head against the lintel - too low ...
- That's how to live - enjoy what you have! He is the wise man who is pleased with a few. Who is an optimist? Who says: in general, everything is bad in the country, everywhere it is worse, everything is fine with us, we are lucky. And he is happy with what he has, and is not tormented. Who is a pessimist? Who says: in general, everything is wonderful in our country, everywhere it’s better, only in our country it’s accidentally bad.
- It is not the level of well-being that makes people happy, but the relationship of hearts and our point of view on our life. Both that and another - everything is in our power, which means that a person is always happy if he wants it, and nothing can stop him.
- But even the first step against pain is pain relief, there is also pain.
Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story "Cancer Ward"
IN THE FIRST CIRCLE (1968)
The story of this novel fits in three Moscow days in 1949. Main character- Gleb Nerzhin, the prototype of which was Alexander Solzhenitsyn himself, an imprisoned engineer who, together with his colleague, must invent an apparatus capable of recognizing a voice. The leadership sets a completely unrealistic time frame for this task, since they now have a magnetic recording with the voice of the person who gave out classified information to the US representative. Nerzhin faces a difficult dilemma: to continue working for the system he hates, or to go to the periphery of the Gulag.
Frame from the TV movie in the "First Circle" (2005, Russia)
- It happens that thoughts that are unconditional at night in a half-sleep turn out to be untenable in the light of the morning.
- Satiety does not depend on how much we eat, but on how we eat! So is happiness, so is happiness, Lyovushka, it does not at all depend on the volume of external benefits that we snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude towards them! This is also stated in Taoist ethics: "Who knows how to be content, he will always be satisfied."
- There is a lot of smart in the world, little is good.
- Do not be afraid of the bullet that whistles, once you hear it, it means that it is no longer in you. The one bullet that will kill you, you will not hear. It turns out that death, as it were, does not concern you: you are - it is not, it will come - you will no longer be.
- War is death. War is terrible not by the advance of troops, not by fires, not by bombings - war is primarily terrible because it gives everything that thinks into the legitimate power of stupidity ...
Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel "In the First Circle"
RED WHEEL (1983)
This novel Alexandra Solzhenitsyn entered the TOP 10 best literary works in history, according to The Guardian. In this novel, the writer conducted research on how communism was born. Here defeat is shown in dramatic tones tsarist army in the Battle of Grunwald while Lenin secretly decided to take advantage of this weakness of the tsarist regime. And so Solzhenitsyn describes everything tragic events until the final victory of the Red Army. The author himself called the "Red Wheel" a narrative in a measured time frame.
- Everything seemed to be suppressed for a thousand years. And then a black browning stuck out to them - and ...
- The truth about Bogrov is terrible for the government and all those in power! Because: it is impossible for the government, it is a shame to admit that all their famous powerful state protection confused by a lonely smart revolutionary. A pure case of the superiority of a brilliant mind!
- What is important is the menacingness of terror, regularity: we will come again! Let's get there! They must know that they have power! It is not necessarily a matter of elimination, but of intimidation.
- Executioners love to adorn themselves with legends.
- If only the revolutionary did not commit a crime against the holy spirit - against his party! Everything else will be forgiven!
- Let him lie - but in the name of truth! Let him kill - but in the name of love! The party takes all the blame, and then terror is not murder, and expropriation is not robbery.
- "Go fight and die" three words the whole life of a revolutionary.
Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's epic novel "The Red Wheel"
What a pity, but four and a half decades after the first publication of the famous essay Alexandra Solzhenitsyn The "Gulag Archipelago" begins to seem to us that it is unlikely that we will ever be able to see the Russian analogue of the Nuremberg Trials. But, if even one writer appears who will make modern Russians look at modernity with horror, exactly as this period deserves it, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn did this at the height of the power of the Soviet empire and was able to outlive the USSR by as much as 17 years.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn- an outstanding Russian writer, publicist, historian, poet and public figure.
He became widely known, in addition to literary works (as a rule, affecting acute socio-political topics), as well as historical and journalistic works about history Russia XIX-XX centuries.
Former dissident, for several decades (sixties, seventies and eighties of the XX century) actively fought against the communist regime in Russia.
In the last years of his life, he was in a conservative position, was one of the spiritual leaders of the Orthodox-patriotic movement.
Russian writer, public figure. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, into a Cossack family. Father, Isaakiy Semenovich, died on a hunt six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from a family of a wealthy landowner. In 1925 (some sources indicate 1924), the family moved to Rostov-on-Don. In 1939, Solzhenitsyn entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (some sources indicate literary courses Moscow State University). In 1941 Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University (entered in 1936).
In October 1941 he was drafted into the army, and in 1942, after studying at the artillery school in Kostroma, he was sent to the front as the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. Awarded with orders Patriotic War 2nd degree and Red Star. On February 9, 1945, for criticizing the actions of I.V. Stalin in personal letters to his childhood friend Nikolai Vitkevich, Captain Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and on July 27 was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. He stayed in the camps from 1945 to 1953: in New Jerusalem near Moscow; in the so-called "sharashka" - a secret research institute in the village of Marfino near Moscow; in 1950-1953 he was imprisoned in one of the Kazakh camps. In February 1953 he was released without the right to reside in the European part of the USSR and sent to "eternal settlement" (1953-1956); lived in the village of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region (Kazakhstan).
On February 3, 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated and moved to Ryazan. Worked as a mathematics teacher. In 1962, in the journal Novy Mir, by special permission of N.S. Khrushchev, the first story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published - "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" (the story "Shch-854. One day of one convict" was remade at the request of the editors) . The story was nominated for the Lenin Prize, which caused active resistance from the communist authorities. In September 1965, Solzhenitsyn's archive came to the State Security Committee (KGB) and, by order of the authorities, further publication of his works in the USSR was discontinued: works that had already been published were withdrawn from libraries, and new books began to be published through samizdat channels and abroad. In November 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not let him back to the USSR. In 1974, after the book The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris (in the USSR, one of the manuscripts was confiscated by the KGB in September 1973, and in December 1973 the publication took place in Paris), the dissident writer was arrested. On February 12, 1974, a trial took place: Alexander Solzhenitsyn was found guilty of high treason, deprived of his citizenship and sentenced to deportation from the USSR the next day.
Since 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in Germany, in Switzerland (Zurich), since 1976 - in the USA (near the city of Cavendish, Vermont). Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a "Vermont recluse." He criticized both the Soviet order and American reality. For 20 years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, he published a large number of works. In the USSR, Solzhenitsyn's works began to be published only from the end of the 1980s. In 1989, in the journal Novy Mir, the first official publication of excerpts from the novel The Gulag Archipelago took place. On August 16, 1990, by decree of the President of the USSR, the Soviet citizenship of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was restored. In 1990, for the book "The Gulag Archipelago" Solzhenitsyn was awarded State Prize. May 27, 1994 the writer returned to Russia. In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn died at home in Moscow, at 23:45:13 on August 3, 2008.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn(December 11, 1918, Kislovodsk - August 3, 2008, Moscow) - an outstanding Russian writer, publicist, historian, poet and public figure.
He became widely known, in addition to literary works (as a rule, affecting acute socio-political topics), as well as historical and journalistic works about the history of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries.
Former dissident, for several decades (sixties, seventies and eighties of the XX century) actively fought against the communist regime in Russia.
In the last years of his life, he was in a conservative position, was one of the spiritual leaders of the Orthodox-patriotic movement.
Russian writer, public figure. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, into a Cossack family. Father, Isaakiy Semenovich, died on a hunt six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from a family of a wealthy landowner. In 1925 (some sources indicate 1924), the family moved to Rostov-on-Don. In 1939, Solzhenitsyn entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (some sources indicate literary courses at Moscow State University). In 1941 Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University (entered in 1936).
In October 1941 he was drafted into the army, and in 1942, after studying at the artillery school in Kostroma, he was sent to the front as the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd class and the Order of the Red Star. On February 9, 1945, for criticizing the actions of I.V. Stalin in personal letters to his childhood friend Nikolai Vitkevich, Captain Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and on July 27 was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. He stayed in the camps from 1945 to 1953: in New Jerusalem near Moscow; in the so-called "sharashka" - a secret research institute in the village of Marfino near Moscow; in 1950-1953 he was imprisoned in one of the Kazakh camps. In February 1953 he was released without the right to reside in the European part of the USSR and sent to "eternal settlement" (1953-1956); lived in the village of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region (Kazakhstan).
On February 3, 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated and moved to Ryazan. Worked as a mathematics teacher. In 1962, in the journal Novy Mir, by special permission of N.S. Khrushchev, the first story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published - "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" (the story "Shch-854. One day of one convict" was remade at the request of the editors) . The story was nominated for the Lenin Prize, which caused active resistance from the communist authorities. In September 1965, Solzhenitsyn's archive came to the State Security Committee (KGB) and, by order of the authorities, further publication of his works in the USSR was discontinued: works that had already been published were withdrawn from libraries, and new books began to be published through samizdat channels and abroad. In November 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not let him back to the USSR. In 1974, after the book The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris (in the USSR, one of the manuscripts was confiscated by the KGB in September 1973, and in December 1973 the publication took place in Paris), the dissident writer was arrested. On February 12, 1974, a trial took place: Alexander Solzhenitsyn was found guilty of high treason, deprived of his citizenship and sentenced to deportation from the USSR the next day.
Since 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in Germany, in Switzerland (Zurich), since 1976 - in the USA (near the city of Cavendish, Vermont). Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a "Vermont recluse." He criticized both the Soviet order and American reality. For 20 years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, he published a large number of works. In the USSR, Solzhenitsyn's works began to be published only from the end of the 1980s. In 1989, in the journal Novy Mir, the first official publication of excerpts from the novel The Gulag Archipelago took place. On August 16, 1990, by decree of the President of the USSR, the Soviet citizenship of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was restored. In 1990 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the State Prize for his book The Gulag Archipelago. May 27, 1994 the writer returned to Russia. In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn died at home in Moscow, at 23:45:13 on August 3, 2008.
Alexander Isaevich (Isaakievich) Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918, Kislovodsk - August 3, 2008, Moscow) - Russian writer, playwright, publicist, poet, public and political figure, who lived and worked in the USSR, Switzerland, the USA and Russia. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1970). A dissident who for several decades (1960-1980s) actively opposed communist ideas, the political system of the USSR and the policy of its authorities.
In addition to artistic literary works, which, as a rule, touch upon acute socio-political issues, he became widely known for his artistic and journalistic works on the history of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries.
Parents were from peasants. This did not stop them from getting a good education. The mother was widowed six months before the birth of her son. To feed him, she went to work as a typist.
In 1938, Solzhenitsyn entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University, and in 1941, having received a diploma in mathematics, he graduated from the correspondence department of the Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History (IFLI) in Moscow.
After the start of World War II, he was drafted into the army (artillery).
On February 9, 1945, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by front-line counterintelligence: when reading (opening) his letter to a friend, NKVD officers found critical remarks about I.V. Stalin. The tribunal sentenced Alexander Isaevich to 8 years in prison, followed by exile in Siberia.
In 1957, after the start of the struggle against Stalin's personality cult, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated. S. Khrushchev personally sanctioned the publication of his story about the Stalinist camps One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962).
In 1967, after Solzhenitsyn sent the Congress of the Union of Writers of the USSR open letter, where he called for an end to censorship, his works were banned. Nevertheless, the novels In the First Circle (1968) and Cancer Ward (1969) were distributed in samizdat and were published without the consent of the author in the West.
In 1970, Alexander Isaevich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1973, the KGB confiscated the manuscript of the writer's new work, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918…1956: An Experience artistic research". The "Gulag Archipelago" meant prisons, forced labor camps, settlements for exiles scattered throughout the USSR.
On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, accused of high treason, and deported to the FRG. In 1976 he moved to the USA and lived in Vermont, doing literary work.
Only in 1994 was the writer able to return to Russia. Until recently, Solzhenitsyn continued writing and social activities. He died on August 3, 2008 in Moscow.
