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Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 after writing in harrowing detail about the system of Soviet labour camps in works such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago.
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He was the conscience of a nation whose writings exposed the horrors of the Communist Gulag and galvanised Russian opposition to the tyranny of the Soviet Union.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s long struggle for his beloved Russia ended last night at his home in Moscow, 14 years after he had returned in triumph from exile imposed by the Soviet regime that he had helped to bring down. His son Stepan said that the Nobel laureate had suffered heart failure, aged 89.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s long struggle for his beloved Russia ended last night at his home in Moscow, 14 years after he had returned in triumph from exile imposed by the Soviet regime that he had helped to bring down. His son Stepan said that the Nobel laureate had suffered heart failure, aged 89.
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Days in the life of . . .
1941 Solzhenitsyn graduates from Rostov University with a degree in mathematics, before joining the army to fight in the Second World War, achieving the rank of captain
1945 Corresponding with a friend, he makes derogatory comments about Stalin. The letters are intercepted and he is arrested
1945-53 He serves eight years in detention camps, an experience that formed the basis of his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
1962 Following a relaxation of censorship, the novella is published in the USSR, on the personal permission of President Krushchev. It is one of the first Russian works to criticise the Stalinist regime
1970 Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Solzhenitsyn does not accept in person – fearing that he would not be let back into the USSR
1972 He smuggles out a Nobel speech describing a “Gulag Archipelago” where “it was my fate to survive, while others – perhaps with a greater gift and stronger than I – have perished”. Two years later he is expelled from the USSR
1990 With the crumbling of the old Soviet Union, Gorbachev restores Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship
1994 Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia
1998 Refuses state award from Boris Yeltsin, blaming him for the country’s ruinous economy
Source: Nobel Prize Committee, Britannica
1941 Solzhenitsyn graduates from Rostov University with a degree in mathematics, before joining the army to fight in the Second World War, achieving the rank of captain
1945 Corresponding with a friend, he makes derogatory comments about Stalin. The letters are intercepted and he is arrested
1945-53 He serves eight years in detention camps, an experience that formed the basis of his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
1962 Following a relaxation of censorship, the novella is published in the USSR, on the personal permission of President Krushchev. It is one of the first Russian works to criticise the Stalinist regime
1970 Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Solzhenitsyn does not accept in person – fearing that he would not be let back into the USSR
1972 He smuggles out a Nobel speech describing a “Gulag Archipelago” where “it was my fate to survive, while others – perhaps with a greater gift and stronger than I – have perished”. Two years later he is expelled from the USSR
1990 With the crumbling of the old Soviet Union, Gorbachev restores Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship
1994 Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia
1998 Refuses state award from Boris Yeltsin, blaming him for the country’s ruinous economy
Source: Nobel Prize Committee, Britannica
