Profile
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Writer Who Exposed the Gulag
Russian novelist and Nobel laureate, born in Kislovodsk on 11 December 1918
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk on 11 December 1918 and studied mathematics and physics. He served with distinction in the Red Army during the Second World War.
In 1945 he was arrested and spent eight years in prison and labour camps, followed by internal exile. His novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) was published with approval from Nikita Khrushchev.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. After The Gulag Archipelago appeared abroad, he was expelled from the USSR in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994 and died in Moscow in 2008.
Career highlights
- 1918Born in Kislovodsk
- 1945Arrested: for private criticism of Stalin
- 1953Released into exile: in Kazakhstan
- 1962One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: published in the USSR
- 1968Cancer Ward and The First Circle: published abroad
- 1970Nobel Prize in Literature
- 1973The Gulag Archipelago: first published in Paris
- 1974Expelled from the Soviet Union
- 1994Returns to Russia
- 2008Dies in Moscow: aged 89
Did you know?He survived cancer while in exile in Kazakhstan, an experience that inspired his novel Cancer Ward.
