Back Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Afrikaans Alexander Issajewitsch Solschenizyn ALS አሌክሳንድር ሶልዠኒጽን Amharic Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn AN ألكسندر سولجنيتسين Arabic الكسندر سولجنتسين ARZ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn AST Aleksandr Soljenitsin AVK Aleksandr Soljenitsın Azerbaijani آلکساندر سولژنیتسین AZB
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | |
|---|---|
 Solzhenitsyn in 1974 | |
| Native name | Александр Исаевич Солженицын |
| Born | 11 December 1918 Kislovodsk, Russian SFSR |
| Died | 3 August 2008 (aged 89) Moscow, Russia |
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| Citizenship | |
| Alma mater | Rostov State University |
| Notable awards |
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| Spouses | Natalia Alekseyevna Reshetovskaya
(m. 1940; div. 1952)
(m. 1957; div. 1972)Natalia Dmitrievna Svetlova
(m. 1973) |
| Children |
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| Signature | |
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| Website | |
| solzhenitsyn | |
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn[a][b] (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)[6][7] 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 for the novels he wrote during the Khrushchev Thaw.
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, a teenage 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. The interrogation process and experience in the Gulag caused Solzhenitsyn to become disillusioned. He felt betrayed by the ideology he once embraced, leading him to become highly critical of Marxism and of authoritarian, far-left ideology. This epiphany led him to gradually become an Eastern Orthodox Christian.
During 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.[8] 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",[9] 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.[10]
- ^ "Solzhenitsyn Flies Home, Vowing Moral Involvement ...". The New York Times. 27 May 1994. Retrieved 29 May 2014.
- ^ "Solzhenitsyn, Alexander". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 11 April 2022.
- ^ a b "Solzhenitsyn". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
- ^ a b "Solzhenitsyn, Alexander". Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Longman. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
- ^ "Solzhenitsyn". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
- ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1970". NobelPrize.org.
- ^ Christopher Hitchens (4 August 2008). "Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1918–2008". Slate Magazine.
- ^ "How I helped Alexandr Solzhenitsyn smuggle his Nobel Lecture from the USSR". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
- ^ "Nobel Prize in Literature 1970". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 17 October 2008.
- ^ Scammell, Michael (11 December 2018). "The Writer Who Destroyed an Empire". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 January 2022.
In 1973, still in the Soviet Union, he sent abroad his literary and polemical masterpiece, 'The Gulag Archipelago.' The nonfiction account exposed the enormous crimes that had led to the wholesale incarceration and slaughter of millions of innocent victims, demonstrating that its dimensions were on a par with the Holocaust. Solzhenitsyn's gesture amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state, calling its very legitimacy into question and demanding revolutionary change.
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