Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008) was born in Kislovodsk, a Russian spa town in the North Caucasus in the Stavropol region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. His father had served in the Russian army during WWI but was killed before Aleksandr was born. His widowed mother, Taisia Solzhenitsyna, raised Aleksandr and his four siblings with the help of her sister in the town of Rostov on the Don River.
Early Life
Solzhenitsyn's mother encouraged his literary interests from an early age. "Even as a child, without any prompting from others, I wanted to be a writer," Solzhenitsyn says in his autobiography. "In the 1930s, I tried to get my writings published but I could not find anyone willing to accept my manuscripts." Solzhenitsyn's mother died in 1939.
Solzhenitsyn studied math at Rostov State University while also taking coursework in philosophy and literature through a correspondence program at a school in Moscow. He served in the Soviet army during WWII. In 1945 he was arrested for the first time for making a disparaging statement about Stalin in a letter to a friend. He was interrogated for more than four months before being sentenced to eight years of labor which he spent in a variety of work camps.
Internal Exile
In 1953 at the age of 35 Solzhenitsyn was sent to the Soviet province of Kazakhstan to serve the rest of his life in internal exile. He was suffering from cancer at this time and, in his own words, "was very near death." A cancer clinic in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) treated him and Solzhenitsyn survived. He spent his exiled years teaching math and science in an elementary school and writing in secret.
After keeping his work secret for almost a decade, Solzhenitsyn decided to risk sharing his work with the literary community in 1961. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published a year later. It was the only book Solzhenitsyn ever saw published in the USSR and it was removed from circulation by the government soon afterwards. The book revealed the nature of the Soviet prison system to both the Soviet public and to the West. Publication of two plays by Solzhenitsyn was also stopped and in 1965 his papers and private writings were seized.
"During these months it seemed to me that I had committed an unpardonable mistake by revealing my work prematurely and that because of this I should not be able to carry it to a conclusion," Solzhenitsyn said in his autobiography.
The Gulag Archipelago
Between 1958 and 1968 Solzhenitsyn worked on his massive and monumental work, The Gulag Archipelago. The book was an eye witness account of the Soviet prison system. The primary point of the work was simple: the threat of imprisonment was a central tool for government in the Soviet Union - and this truth brought the moral basis of Soviet government into question.
The book was published in the West in 1973. It was not legally available in Russia until 1989.
The Nobel Prize and Life in the West
Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He was not able to receive the prize until 1974, when the Soviet Union deported him to the West. He was originally sent to West Germany, but soon was offered a place at Stanford University where he spent the next few years working.
Solzhenitsyn lived privately in Vermont from 1976 to 1994. He never mastered spoken English. In 1994 he returned to Russia and lived in Moscow until his death at the age of 89 from a stroke.
Works
Solzhenitsyn's major works included:
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
- The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
Also among his most important works:
- The First Circle (1968)
- The Cancer Ward (1968)
- The Love-Girl and the Innocent (1969 - also sometimes called The Tenderfoot and the Tart).
