Alexander Solzhenitsyn: works, a brief description. The most significant works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn(December 11, 1918, Kislovodsk - August 3, 2008, Moscow) - an outstanding Russian writer, publicist, historian, poet and public figure.

He gained wide popularity, in addition to literary works(as a rule, touching on acute socio-political topics), as well as historical and journalistic works about the history of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries.

Former dissident, for several decades (sixties, seventies and eighties of the XX century) actively fought against the communist regime in Russia.

AT last years life was on conservative positions, was one of the spiritual leaders of the Orthodox-patriotic movement.

Russian writer, public figure. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, into a Cossack family. Father, Isaakiy Semenovich, died on a hunt six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from a family of a wealthy landowner. In 1925 (some sources indicate 1924), the family moved to Rostov-on-Don. In 1939, Solzhenitsyn entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (some sources indicate literary courses at Moscow State University). In 1941 Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University (entered in 1936).

In October 1941 he was drafted into the army, and in 1942, after studying at the artillery school in Kostroma, he was sent to the front as the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. Awarded with orders Patriotic War 2nd degree and Red Star. On February 9, 1945, for criticizing the actions of I.V. Stalin in personal letters to his childhood friend Nikolai Vitkevich, Captain Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and on July 27 was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. He stayed in the camps from 1945 to 1953: in New Jerusalem near Moscow; in the so-called "sharashka" - a secret research institute in the village of Marfino near Moscow; in 1950-1953 he was imprisoned in one of the Kazakh camps. In February 1953 he was released without the right to reside in the European part of the USSR and sent to "eternal settlement" (1953-1956); lived in the village of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region (Kazakhstan).

On February 3, 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated and moved to Ryazan. Worked as a mathematics teacher. In 1962, in the magazine " New world", with the special permission of N.S. Khrushchev, the first story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published - "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" (the story "Sch-854. One day of a prisoner" was reworked at the request of the editors). The story was nominated for the Lenin Prize, which caused active resistance from the communist authorities. In September 1965, Solzhenitsyn's archive fell into the State Security Committee (KGB) and, by order of the authorities, the further publication of his works in the USSR was stopped: already published works were withdrawn from libraries, and new books began to be published through the channels " samizdat" and abroad. In November 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not let him back to the USSR. In 1974, after the publication in Paris of the book "The Gulag Archipelago" (in the USSR, one of the manuscripts was confiscated by the KGB in September 1973, and in December bre 1973 was published in Paris), the dissident writer was arrested. On February 12, 1974, a trial took place: Alexander Solzhenitsyn was found guilty of high treason, deprived of his citizenship and sentenced to expulsion from the USSR the next day.

Since 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in Germany, in Switzerland (Zurich), since 1976 - in the USA (near the city of Cavendish, Vermont). Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a "Vermont recluse." He criticized both the Soviet order and American reality. During 20 years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, he published a large number of works. In the USSR, Solzhenitsyn's works began to be published only from the end of the 1980s. In 1989, in the journal Novy Mir, the first official publication of excerpts from the novel The Gulag Archipelago took place. On August 16, 1990, by decree of the President of the USSR, the Soviet citizenship of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was restored. In 1990 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the State Prize for his book The Gulag Archipelago. May 27, 1994 the writer returned to Russia. In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn died at home in Moscow, at 23:45:13 on August 3, 2008.

One of whose work today is of particular interest to researchers is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The works of this author are considered primarily in the socio-political aspect. Solzhenitsyn is the subject of this article.

Book themes

Solzhenitsyn's work is the history of the Gulag Archipelago. The peculiarity of his books is the depiction of man's opposition to the forces of evil. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a man who went through the war, and at the end of it was arrested for "treason." He dreamed of literary creativity and sought to study as deeply as possible the history of the revolution, because it was here that he sought inspiration. But life threw him other stories. Prisons, camps, exile and an incurable disease. Then miraculous healing, worldwide fame. And finally - the expulsion from the Soviet Union.

So, what did Solzhenitsyn write about? The works of this writer are a long way of self-improvement. And it is given only in the presence of a huge life experience and high cultural level. Real Writer always a little above life. He seems to see himself and those around him from the outside, somewhat detached.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has come a long way. He saw the world, getting into which, a person has little chance of surviving both physically and spiritually. He survived. Moreover, he was able to reflect this in his work. Thanks to a rich and rare literary gift, the books created by Solzhenitsyn became the property of the Russian people.

Artworks

The list includes the following novels, novellas and short stories:

• "One day of Ivan Denisovich".
• « Matrenin yard».
• "The case at the station Kochetkov".
• "Zakhar Kalita".
• "Youth".
• "Does not matter".
• The Gulag Archipelago.
• "In the first circle."

Before the first publication of his creations, he worked for more than twelve years literary creativity Solzhenitsyn. The works listed above are only a part of it. creative heritage. But these books should be read by every person for whom Russian is native. Themes are not focused on horror camp life. This writer, like no other in the 20th century, was able to portray a real one striking in his stamina, based on some natural and deep ideas about life.

A day in the life of a prisoner

The camp theme became close to the Soviet people. The most monstrous thing about it is that it was forbidden to discuss it. Moreover, even after 1953, fear did not allow talking about the tragedy that occurred in every third family. Solzhenitsyn's work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brought into society a kind of ethics forged in the camps. In whatever situation a person finds himself, he should not forget about his dignity. Shukhov - the hero of Solzhenitsyn's story - does not live every camp day, but tries to survive. But the words of the old prisoner, which he heard back in forty-three, sunk into his soul: "The one who licks bowls dies."

Solzhenitsyn in this story combines two points of view: the author and the hero. They are not opposite. They have a certain common ideology. The differences in them are the level of generalization and the breadth of the material. Solzhenitsyn manages to achieve a distinction between the thoughts of the hero and the reasoning of the author with the help of stylistic means.

Readers did not remain indifferent to Ivan Denisovich literary magazine"New world". The publication of the story resonated in society. But before getting on the pages of the periodical, it was necessary to go through a difficult path. And here, too, the simple Russian character won. The author himself autobiographical work claimed that "Ivan Denisovich" got into print, because the editor-in-chief of "New World" was none other than a peasant from the people - Alexander Tvardovsky. Yes, and the main critic of the country - Nikita Khrushchev - was interested in "camp life through the eyes of a simple peasant."

Righteous Matryona

Preserve humanity in conditions that are less conducive to understanding, love, disinterestedness... Such is the problem to which Solzhenitsyn's work Matrenin Dvor is devoted. The heroine of the story is a lonely woman, misunderstood by her husband, adopted daughter, neighbors with whom she has lived side by side for half a century. Matrena has not accumulated property, but at the same time she works for free for others. She does not harbor anger at anyone and does not seem to see all those vices that overwhelm the souls of her neighbors. It is on people like Matrena, in the author's opinion, that the village, the city, and all our land rest.

History of writing

After exile, Solzhenitsyn lived for almost a year in a remote village. Worked as a teacher. He rented a room from a local resident, who became the prototype of the heroine of the story "Matryona Dvor". The story was published in 1963. The work was highly appreciated by both readers and critics. Chief Editor"New World" A. Tvardovsky noted that the illiterate and simple woman named Matrena earned the interest of readers due to her rich spiritual world.

Solzhenitsyn was able to publish only two stories in the Soviet Union. The works "In the First Circle", "The Gulag Archipelago" were published for the first time in the West.

Artistic research

In his work, Solzhenitsyn combined the study of reality and a writer's approach. While working on The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn used the testimonies of more than two hundred people. The works about camp life and the inhabitants of the sharashka are based not only on their own experience. When reading the novel The Gulag Archipelago, sometimes you don’t understand what it is - or treatise? But the result of the study can only be statistical data. Solzhenitsyn's own experience and the stories of acquaintances allowed him to summarize all the material he had collected.

The originality of the novel

The Gulag Archipelago consists of three volumes. In each of them, the author presents different periods in the history of the camps. On the example of special cases, the technology of arrest, investigation is given. The sophistication with which the employees of the Lubyanka institution worked is amazing. To accuse a person of what he did not do, the special services performed a number of complex manipulations.

The author makes the reader feel like a camp dweller. The novel "The Gulag Archipelago" is a mystery that attracts and attracts. Acquaintance with the psychology of man, mutilated by constant fear and terror, forms in readers a persistent hatred of totalitarian regime in all its manifestations.

A person who turns into a prisoner forgets about moral, political and aesthetic principles. The only goal- survive. Especially terrible is the change in the psyche of a prisoner brought up in idealistic, lofty ideas about his own place in society. In a world of cruelty and unscrupulousness, it is almost impossible to be a person, and not to be one means to break oneself forever.

In the literary underground

For many years Solzhenitsyn created his works and then burned them. The content of the destroyed manuscripts was kept only in his memory. Positive points underground activity for the writer, according to Solzhenitsyn, lies in the fact that the author is freed from the influence of censors and editors. But after twelve years of continuous writing of short stories and novels that remained unknown, his lonely work began to stifle him. Leo Tolstoy once said that a writer should not publish his books during his lifetime. Because it's immoral. Solzhenitsyn argued that one can agree with the words of the great classic, but still every author needs criticism.

The farewell ceremony for the writer and public figure Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died on Monday night at the age of 90, will be held on Tuesday at Russian Academy Sciences on Leninsky Prospekt, RIA Novosti was told in the Solzhenitsyn Public Fund.

famous Russian writer, Nobel laureate Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn is the author of many works on the history of Russia.

The very first work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn - the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", published in Novy Mir in 1962, brought him world fame. Then the stories "Matryona Dvor", "The Incident at the Kochetovka Station", "For the Good of the Cause" and "Zakhar-Kalita" were published. At this point, publications ceased, the writer's works were published in samizdat and abroad.

According to statistics, the peak of reader interest in Solzhenitsyn fell on 1988-1993, when his books were printed in millions of copies. For example, in 1989 Novy Mir published an abbreviated magazine version of The Gulag Archipelago with a circulation of 1.6 million copies. The novel "In the First Circle" from 1990 to 1994 was published by ten (!) Different Russian publishing houses with a total circulation of 2.23 million copies. Cancer Ward was re-released at the same time nine times. But all records were broken by the manifesto “How do we equip Russia”, published in September 1990 general circulation in 27 million copies.
In recent years, interest in this author has somewhat decreased. The epic "Red Wheel" in 1997 was published only in the amount of 30 thousand copies.

In 2006, the publishing house "Vremya" signed an agreement with Solzhenitsyn on the publication during 2006-2010 of his collected works in 30 volumes - the first in Russia and in the world. At the end of 2006, three volumes of the Collected Works were published with a circulation of three thousand copies. In accordance with the agreement with the publishing house, as each volume is sold, the books will be reprinted in the required quantity.

The publication of Solzhenitsyn's Collected Works began with the release of the first, seventh, and eighth volumes. Such inconsistency is due to the fact that it was very important for the writer to make the last author's corrections and see the Red Wheel epic printed. It was planned just for the 7th and 8th volume. It was the "Red Wheel", where Solzhenitsyn explores in detail one of the most difficult and dramatic periods in the life of Russia - the history of the socialist revolution of 1917, the writer considered the main book in his work.

Most famous works writer

Epic novel "The Red Wheel".

The first book of the epic - the novel "August the Fourteenth", was published in 1972 on English language. The first edition in Russia - Military Publishing, 1993 (in 10 volumes), reprint reproduction from the collected works of A. Solzhenitsyn (YMCA‑PRESS, Vermont‑Paris, vols. 11‑20, 1983‑1991).

The main literary work of Solzhenitsyn. The author himself defined the genre as "narration in measured terms."

According to Solzhenitsyn himself, he spent his whole life studying the period dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. “In the “Red Wheel” is a clot of all this. I tried not to miss a single fact. I found the law of the revolution - when this grandiose wheel spins, it captures the whole people and its organizers.

The story "One day of Ivan Denisovich"

"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" - the first published work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which brought him world fame. The story tells about one day in the life of a prisoner, Russian peasant and soldier, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov in January 1951. For the first time in Soviet literature readers were truthfully, with great artistic skill shown Stalinist repressions. Today "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" has been translated into 40 languages ​​of the world. In the West, a film was made based on this work.

In one of the villages in the outback of Russia called Talnovo, the narrator settles. The mistress of the hut in which he lodges is called Matryona Ignatievna Grigoryeva, or simply Matryona. The fate of Matryona, told by her, fascinates the guest. Gradually, the narrator realizes that it is precisely on people like Matrena, who give themselves to others without a trace, that the whole village and the whole Russian land still rests.

"The Gulag Archipelago"

Secretly written by Solzhenitsyn in the USSR between 1958 and 1968 (finished on February 22, 1967), the first volume was published in Paris in December 1973. In the USSR, Archipelago was published in 1990 (the chapters selected by the author were first published in the journal Novy Mir, 1989, No. 7‑11).

The Gulag Archipelago is a fictional historical study by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the Soviet repressive system from 1918 to 1956. Based on eyewitness accounts, documents and personal experience the author himself.
The phrase "Gulag Archipelago" has become a household word, often used in journalism and fiction, primarily in relation to the penitentiary system of the USSR in the 1920s-1950s.

Novel "In the first circle"

The title contains an allusion to the first circle of Dante's hell.

The action takes place in a specialized institute-prison Marfino, an analogue of the one where Solzhenitsyn was kept in the late 1940s. The main theme of the institute is the development of the "Secret Telephony Apparatus", which is carried out in a "sharashka" on the personal instructions of Stalin. The central place in the narrative is occupied by the ideological dispute between the heroes of the novel Gleb Nerzhin and Sologdin and Lev Rubin. All of them went through the war and the Gulag system. At the same time, Rubin remained a convinced communist. In contrast, Nerzhin is confident in the depravity of the very foundation of the system.

Novel "Cancer Ward"(the author himself defined it as a "story")

In the USSR it was published in samizdat, in Russia it was first published in the journal Novy Mir in 1991.

Written in 1963-1966 based on the writer's stay in the oncology department of a hospital in Tashkent in 1954. The hero of the novel, Rusanov, like the author himself, is being treated for cancer in a Central Asian provincial hospital. main topic novel - the struggle of man with death: the writer holds the idea that the victims deadly disease paradoxically achieve the freedom that healthy people are deprived of.

The great Russian writer Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk. His father, Isaakiy Semyonovich, came from the peasants of the village of Sablinskoye (now the Stavropol Territory). An officer of the First World War, he died six months before the birth of his son from a hunting accident. Solzhenitsyn's mother, Taisia ​​Zakharovna, was the daughter of a large landowner from the Kuban, Zakhar Shcherbak, who in his youth began as a poor farm laborer who worked for one meal, and then became rich by his own labors.

The new secretary of the Central Committee for ideology, Demichev, had a personal conversation with Solzhenitsyn, inciting him to become a loyal Soviet writer. But KGB overlaid A.I. with surveillance, setting wiretaps on most of his friends. On the evening of September 11, 1965, based on the materials of the listening, a search was made at the home of two acquaintances of the writer - V. Teush and I. Zilberberg. The Chekists seized Solzhenitsyn's archive from them - all of his already written works, except for the carefully concealed "Archipelago". From these materials, the Kremlin leaders finally clarified what they had long suspected: in his criticism of the Soviet system, the writer goes much further than could be expected from Ivan Denisovich and Matryona - he denies communism as a whole, and not its individual "shortcomings". ".

Solzhenitsyn was waiting for his arrest, but the authorities chose a different tactic towards him. Fearing a stormy public reaction in the USSR and the West, they decided not to make a fuss, but to “strangle” the writer slowly and gradually: to finally stop him from being published in his homeland and launch a slander campaign. Hired lecturers began to tell at party meetings that Solzhenitsyn was in the camp for criminal business, but was in the war Vlasov. Published by Novy Mir in January 1966, the almost "neutral" story " Zakhar-Kalita became Solzhenitsyn's last legal publication in the Soviet Union until 1988. The KGB gave the “anti-communist” works of A. I. seized by it to read to the most prominent official writers, and they wrote “outraged” reviews of them to the Central Committee.

During the winters of 1965-1966 and 1966-1967 Solzhenitsyn worked in Estonia on Archipelago. He continued to write the novel The Cancer Ward, which he had begun earlier, about a former prisoner who had undergone a fatal illness. The first part of the "Corpus" was soon offered to the "New World". Tvardovsky at first wanted to publish it, but then said that it was risky to present such a thing now. When the story was also rejected by other magazines, A.I. gave it to Samizdat.

The public showed warm sympathy for Solzhenitsyn. In the fall of 1966, he began to be invited to speak to teams of scientific and cultural institutions Moscow. The authorities forbade these meetings, but two of them still managed to be held - in institutes nuclear energy and Oriental studies. Both were attended by hundreds of listeners who greeted Alexander Isaevich's reading of the most "bold" excerpts from Corpus and Krug with applause. On November 16, 1966, Moscow writers, in spite of obstacles from above, arranged a discussion in the House of Writers " cancer corps". The majority here expressed full support for the author of the story.

In May 1967, the IV Congress of the Union Soviet writers. Solzhenitsyn turned to him with open letter , where he indicated that throughout Soviet era literature was under the yoke of administrators who did not understand anything about it, and the best masters pen were subjected to severe persecution. The presidium of the congress silenced the letter, but about 100 writers in a special appeal demanded that it be discussed - this was an unheard-of event for the USSR!

Many party bosses demanded severe reprisals against Solzhenitsyn, but in the face of widespread approval of the letter by the Soviet and foreign intelligentsia, the authorities were afraid to completely denigrate themselves. In June and September 1967, the secretariat of the Writers' Union twice invited Alexander Isaevich to his place "for talks." Solzhenitsyn was urged to resolutely and publicly "dissociate himself from the bourgeois press", which refused to support him. In return, they promised to give permission for the publication of the "Cancer Ward" and to refute the slander being spread. However, none of these promises were fulfilled. The KGB, on the contrary, resorted to a new "cunning plan". In 1968, through his agents Victor Louis and the Slovak Pavel Lichko, he handed over the Corpus for publication to several Western publishers. Chekists concealed their involvement in this action. After the new publications in the West, they hoped to intensify their fierce campaign against "Solzhenitsyn's connections with a hostile foreign country" and to convince everyone that he was being published there because of money. AI responded by saying that none of the foreign publishers received from him the right to publish Cancer Ward.

From late April to early June 1968, Solzhenitsyn, with his wife and devoted assistants E. Voronyanskaya and E. Chukovskaya, printed the final version of The Archipelago at their dacha in Rozhdestve-na-Istya. A week later, the film was transported to Paris by the hands of the grandson of Leonid Andreev, Alexander. However, it fell into the hands of Andreev's unscrupulous granddaughter Olga Carlisle, who delayed translating the book into English, wanting by hook or by crook to appropriate the copyright to it. In 1971, Solzhenitsyn had to transfer a new film of Gulag to the West.

The secret history of the Gulag Archipelago. Documentary

December 11, 1968 Alexander Isaevich turned fifty years old. More than 500 congratulatory telegrams and 200 letters from all over the country came to Ryazan. In a reply letter true friends the hero of the day said: “I promise ... never to change the truth. My only dream is to be worthy of the hopes of reading Russia.”

N. Reshetovskaya was not too pleased with her husband's refusal from the well-fed career of the Soviet literary master caressed by the authorities. She was also annoyed by the fact that for the sake of secret work on new books, he was absent from home for a long time, "does not live with his family." Reshetovskaya and Solzhenitsyn had no children. In August 1968, Alexander Isaevich met a new young assistant - Natalya Dmitrievna Svetlova. Very purposeful, energetic and hardworking, she helped arrange the largest and most trouble-free storage of the writer's archives. A love relationship soon began between her and Solzhenitsyn.

From the beginning of March 1969, A.I. began to write an epic about the revolution of 1917 - "The Red Wheel", which he considered the main book of his life. The likelihood grew that the KGB would try to kill him, and in September 1969 Solzhenitsyn was invited to settle in her dacha in the elite Zhukovka by the famous musical couple - Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya. In November 1969, at the insistence of the authorities, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In response, he wrote an angry accusatory letter to the SP Secretariat. Many Soviet (Mozhaev, Baklanov, Trifonov, Okudzhava, Voinovich, Tendryakov, Maksimov, Kopelev, L. Chukovskaya) and Western writers protested against the expulsion.

In 1970 Solzhenitsyn was nominated abroad as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature as " greatest writer modernity, equal to Dostoevsky. The Kremlin put pressure on the governments of France and Sweden to prevent the Solzhenitsyn Prize from being awarded, but on October 8, 1970, he was declared its winner. However, the Soviet threat campaign was still not unsuccessful. AI at first wanted to go to Stockholm for a prize in order to "burst" there with a fiery speech against communism. But the frightened Swedes insisted that his visit should be as quiet as possible. They suggested that Solzhenitsyn, if possible, avoid communication with the press and limit himself to a three-minute gratitude during the Nobel banquet, to the sound of knives and forks. Trip to Stockholm lost public sense, and the writer refused it.

In the summer of 1970, it was learned that Natalia Svetlova would have a child from A.I. Not wanting to part with her Nobel laureate husband, on October 14, Reshetovskaya made a demonstrative suicide attempt at Rostropovich's dacha. She drank sleeping pills, but she was pumped out. On the night of December 30, Natalya Dmitrievna gave birth to a son, Ermolai Solzhenitsyn.

In the winter of 1970-1971, Alexander Isaevich graduated from the first node of the "Red Wheel" - the novel "August the Fourteenth". It was forwarded to Paris, to Nikita Struva, the head of the YMCA-press publishing house, and in June it was published there in Russian. This book, written from a Russian-patriotic standpoint, not only provoked a new heart-rending howl from communist henchmen, but also alienated the Westernizing part of the intelligentsia from Solzhenitsyn, including a number of his recent close assistants.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn- an outstanding Russian writer, publicist, historian, poet and public figure.

He became widely known, in addition to literary works (as a rule, affecting acute socio-political topics), as well as historical and journalistic works about the history of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries.

Former dissident, for several decades (sixties, seventies and eighties of the XX century) actively fought against the communist regime in Russia.

In the last years of his life, he was in a conservative position, was one of the spiritual leaders of the Orthodox-patriotic movement.

Russian writer, public figure. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, into a Cossack family. Father, Isaakiy Semenovich, died on a hunt six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from a family of a wealthy landowner. In 1925 (some sources indicate 1924), the family moved to Rostov-on-Don. In 1939, Solzhenitsyn entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (some sources indicate literary courses at Moscow State University). In 1941 Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University (entered in 1936).

In October 1941 he was drafted into the army, and in 1942, after studying at the artillery school in Kostroma, he was sent to the front as the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd class and the Order of the Red Star. On February 9, 1945, for criticizing the actions of I.V. Stalin in personal letters to his childhood friend Nikolai Vitkevich, Captain Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and on July 27 was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. He stayed in the camps from 1945 to 1953: in New Jerusalem near Moscow; in the so-called "sharashka" - a secret research institute in the village of Marfino near Moscow; in 1950-1953 he was imprisoned in one of the Kazakh camps. In February 1953 he was released without the right to reside in the European part of the USSR and sent to "eternal settlement" (1953-1956); lived in the village of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region (Kazakhstan).

On February 3, 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated and moved to Ryazan. Worked as a mathematics teacher. In 1962, in the journal "New World", by special permission of N.S. Khrushchev, the first story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published - "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" (the story "Shch-854. One day of one convict" was altered at the request of the editors) . The story was nominated for the Lenin Prize, which caused active resistance from the communist authorities. In September 1965, Solzhenitsyn's archive came to the State Security Committee (KGB) and, by order of the authorities, further publication of his works in the USSR was discontinued: already published works were withdrawn from libraries, and new books began to be published through samizdat channels and abroad. In November 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not let him back to the USSR. In 1974, after the book The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris (in the USSR, one of the manuscripts was confiscated by the KGB in September 1973, and in December 1973 the publication took place in Paris), the dissident writer was arrested. On February 12, 1974, a trial took place: Alexander Solzhenitsyn was found guilty of high treason, deprived of his citizenship and sentenced to expulsion from the USSR the next day.

Since 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in Germany, in Switzerland (Zurich), since 1976 - in the USA (near the city of Cavendish, Vermont). Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a "Vermont recluse." He criticized both the Soviet order and American reality. For 20 years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, he published a large number of works. In the USSR, Solzhenitsyn's works began to be published only from the end of the 1980s. In 1989, in the journal Novy Mir, the first official publication of excerpts from the novel The Gulag Archipelago took place. On August 16, 1990, by decree of the President of the USSR, the Soviet citizenship of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was restored. In 1990 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the State Prize for his book The Gulag Archipelago. May 27, 1994 the writer returned to Russia. In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn died at home in Moscow, at 23:45:13 on August 3, 2008.