Historical Figure
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1918–2008
Soviet-Russian author and dissident (1918–2008)
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Biography
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet and Russian author and dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". His nonfiction work The Gulag Archipelago "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state" and sold tens of millions of copies.
In Their Own Words (5)
It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.
"Peace and Violence" (1973) , 1973
Call no day happy 'til it is done; call no man happy til he is dead.
Solzhenitsyn here seems to be paraphrasing Sophocles who expresses similar ideas at the end of Oedipus Rex. This is also a direct reference to Plutarch's line, "call no man fortunate until he is dead," from his "Parallel Lives". , 1975
For a country to have a great writer … is like having another government. That’s why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
Innokenty, in Ch. 57 , 1968
It is almost always impossible to evaluate at the time events which you have already experienced, and to understand their meaning with the guidance of their effects. All the more unpredictable and surprising to us will be the course of future events.
Autobiographical sketch (1970), at Nobelprize.org , 1970
...Вы сильны лишь постольку, поскольку отбираете у людей не всё. Но человек, у которого вы отобрали всё, — уже неподвластен вам, он снова свободен.
You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again. , 1968
Timeline
The story of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, told in moments.
Arrested by Soviet counterintelligence for criticizing Stalin in a private letter to a friend. Sentenced to eight years in labor camps. He was a decorated artillery captain at the time.
Published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the literary journal Novy Mir. Khrushchev personally authorized it. The issue sold out immediately.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He didn't travel to Stockholm to accept it, fearing the Soviet government wouldn't let him back in.
Deported from the Soviet Union the day after The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris. Put on a plane to Frankfurt with no warning. He wouldn't return for 20 years.
Died of heart failure in Moscow at 89. He'd returned to Russia in 1994 by train across Siberia, retracing his exile.
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