Solzhenitsyn, Soviet dissident and Russian hero, dies at 89
Described by some critics as communism’s deadliest foe, Solzhenitsyn’s books chronicled the horrors of the Soviet gulag system. He was lauded as a moral and spiritual leader as well as one of the greatest writers of his time.
By: IranVNC
Published: Monday, August 04, 2008
11:00GMT—7:00AM/EST
SOLZHENITSYN – RUSSIAN WRITER – NOBEL LAUREATE
Washington, 4 August (IranVNC)— Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the dissident Russian literary giant of the Soviet era and Nobel prize laureate who revealed the horrors of Stalin's brutal labor camps to the world, has passed away Sunday at the age of 89 at his home near Moscow. Apparent cause of death was said to be heart failure.
Described by some critics as communism’s deadliest foe, Solzhenitsyn’s books chronicled the horrors of the Soviet gulag system. He was lauded as a moral and spiritual leader as well as one of the greatest writers of his time. His unflinching accounts of torment and survival in the Soviet Union's slave labor camps riveted his compatriots and “did more to demolish the moral and intellectual case for Communism than any of its critics, writer or statesman, poet or legislator of the world, acknowledged or not,” writes Marcus Warren, Editor of Telegraph.co.uk and a former Moscow correspondent who covered Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s return to Russia from exile in 1994.
His writings earned him 20 years of exile, but also international renown, making him one of the most prominent dissidents of the Soviet era and a symbol of intellectual resistance to communist rule.
His monumental work “The Gulag Archipelago” written in secrecy in the Soviet Union and published in Paris in three volumes between 1973 and 1978, is the definitive work on Stalin's camps, where tens of millions perished.
Last year he was awarded one of Russia's highest honors, the State Prize. In announcing the award Yury Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called Solzhenitsyn "the author of works without which the history of the 20th century is unthinkable."
His experience in the labor camps was described in his short novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. His major works, including “The First Circle” and “Cancer Ward”, brought him global admiration and the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature.
Stripped of his citizenship and sent into exile in 1974 after the publication of the Gulag Archipelago the writer settled in the United States.
But in 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the publication of Solzhenitsyn's works as part of his Perestroika and restored his Soviet citizenship, enabling Solzhenitsyn to return as a hero in 1994.
Sources: Telegraph, Los Angeles Times
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