Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
Kaleidoscope

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


The belief that "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world" characterizes author Solzhenitsyn's efforts to record the true history of the Soviet Union in his writing. This constant battle against the repression of the Soviet government won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 and permission to emigrate to the West in 1974.  


Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born on Dec 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk in the Soviet Union. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Rostov, graduating in 1941. He taught secondary school before being inducted into the Red Army in World War II, where he was decorated for bravery. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn was suddenly sentenced to a forced labor camp for an alleged criticism of Joseph Stalin. He was transferred to a penal scientific research institute in Moscow in 1947 and soon abandoned his Marxist principles and began to actively criticize the Soviet government. This outspoken dissent led to a transfer to a hard labor camp in Soviet Central Asia. He was released in 1953 and returned to teaching school. In the mid-1950s, Nikita Khrushchev's ascension to power brought a relaxation of policies, and Solzhenitsyn's first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which described his labor camp experience, was published in 1962. It was acclaimed in both Russia and the West.  


The return of a more conservative government in 1964 and Solzhenitsyn's denunciation of strict censorship in 1967 led to his later novels being banned and only published in the West. They included The First Circle (1968), which described Solzhenitsyn's prison experience; Cancer Ward (1967), about his exile in central Asia and bout with cancer; and August 1914 (1972), the first of a trilogy about the emergence of modern Russia. Solzhenitsyn's final clash with the Moscow government came in 1974 with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, about Soviet concentration camps and a factual account of Stalinist terror. However, his popularity in the West forced authorities to deport Solzhenitsyn rather than return him to prison. He lived in Cavendish, Vermont until May 1994, when he returned to Russia. His Gulag Archipelago has since grown to three volumes with proceeds from its sale going to the Russian Social Fund to aid families of imprisoned Soviet dissidents. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Solzhenitsyn has represented the right wing of Soviet politics, believing that authoritarian rule, not democracy, should replace communism.  


[Sources: Cambridge Biographical Dictionary; Current Biography Yearbook; The Macmillan Dictionary of Biography]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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