Educated at Rostov State University and the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History. During the Second World War, he served as the commander of a sound-ranging battery in the Red Army. He was awarded medals and rose to the rank of captain. While serving, he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag for criticizing Josef Stalin in a private letter. During Kruschev's government, he was released and exonerated. He began to write novels about repression in the Soviet Union and his experiences in the Gulag. His first novel, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, appeared in 1962 with the approval of Kruschev. Following the removal of Kruschev, the Soviet authorities discouraged Solzhenitsyn from writing. Nevertheless he continued writing and publishing in other countries. In 1976, he moved to the United States and continued to write. Shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990,his citizenship was restored and, in 1994, he returned to Russia. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature His works, which have sold in the millions, include Matryona's Home (1963), Cancer Ward(1968), First Circle (1968), August 1914 (1971), The Gulag Archipelago - 3Vols. (1973-75), The Red Wheel (1971-1991) and Two Hundred Years Together (2001-2002). |
