Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn author page

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn biography

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, essayist and historian. He was born on 11 December 1918 in Kislovodsk, in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and studied mathematics at Rostov State University while also taking correspondence courses in literature and philosophy :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}.

During the Second World War, Solzhenitsyn served as an artillery captain in the Red Army. In 1945 he was arrested by Soviet counter-intelligence for criticising Joseph Stalin in private correspondence and spent eight years in the Gulag followed by internal exile :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}. These experiences formed the basis of his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published in 1962 with approval from Nikita Khrushchev :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}.

Solzhenitsyn wrote several major works on Soviet repression. His novels include Cancer Ward (1966), In the First Circle (1968), and August 1914 (1971). His three-volume non-fiction epic, The Gulag Archipelago (1958–1967), documented the Soviet prison camp system with testimony and research. Upon publication in 1973, it was described as a “head‑on challenge to the Soviet state” and sold tens of millions of copies globally :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}.

In 1970 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.” Due to his political standing, he did not receive the award in Stockholm until 1974 :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}.

Following publication of The Gulag Archipelago, he was stripped of Soviet citizenship and deported in February 1974. He lived in Germany, Switzerland and then Vermont, USA, from 1976. His citizenship was restored in 1990, and he returned to Russia in 1994, remaining there until his death on 3 August 2008 from heart failure at age 89 :contentReference[oaicite:5]{index=5}.

His final years saw translations of his literature into over thirty languages and continued influence on historical and political discourse. His death was followed by a burial service at Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. Solzhenitsyn held both the Nobel Prize (1970) and the Templeton Prize (1983).