Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in Stavropol Krai, Russia, in 1918. He was raised by his mother after his father was killed in a hunting accident, and she encouraged his interests in literature and science. Solzhenitsyn studied mathematics at Rostov State University, while simultaneously studying literature and history at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy. Solzhenitsyn served in the Red Army during WWII, and during this time, began developing doubts regarding the moral foundations of the Soviet Regime. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn was sent to a work camp for writing derogatory remarks about Joseph Stalin in a private letter to a friend. He was detained at several camps before transferring to a “special camp” for political prisoners, where he worked as a miner, bricklayer, and foreman. After being released, Solzhenitsyn was exiled. During his imprisonment and exile, Solzhenitsyn abandoned his Marxist ideologies, gradually developing a philosophical Christian outlook. After Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” in 1956, Solzhenitsyn was exonerated, and returned to European Russia where he began teaching and writing at night. In 1962, Solzhenitsyn published his first story, One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich in Novyi Mir, a popular Russian literary journal, granting Solzhenitsyn literary notoriety in the Soviet Union and in the West. Although Solzhenitsyn continued writing, after Khrushchev was ousted in 1964 his work was denied publication. The controversial works Solzhenitsyn wrote after One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich lead to great controversy and even an assassination attempt by the KGB and the eventual removal of his Russian citizenship. In 1990, his Russian citizenship was reinstated, and he returned to Russia where he died of heart failure in 2008.