ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN & ‘THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO’

After a windy day, today has been a day of heavy rain, so heavy that The Grandma has had a bout of laziness and has decided to stay home rereading The Gulag Archipelago, a masterpiece written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918-3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system.

He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature. His nonfiction work The Gulag Archipelago amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state and sold tens of millions of copies.

Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. At a young age he became an atheist and embraced Marxism–Leninism. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Joseph Stalin in private correspondence with another field officer. As a result of his experience in prison and the camps, he gradually became a philosophically minded Eastern Orthodox Christian.

During the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn was released and exonerated. He started writing novels about his experiences and repression in the Soviet Union. In 1962, he published his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich -an account of Stalinist repressions- with approval from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. His last work to be published in the Soviet Union was Matryona's Place in 1963.

After Khrushchev lost power, Soviet authorities unsuccessfully tried to discourage Solzhenitsyn from writing. His novels published in other countries included Cancer Ward in 1966, In the First Circle in 1968, August 1914 in 1971 and The Gulag Archipelago in 1973.

The last novel outraged authorities and, in 1974, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and flown to West Germany. He soon moved to Switzerland and then, in 1976, to Vermont in the United States with his family. 

He continued to write and his Soviet citizenship was restored in 1990. He returned to Russia four years later and remained there until his death in 2008.

Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk (now in Stavropol Krai, Russia). His father, Isaakiy Semyonovich Solzhenitsyn, was of Russian descent, and his mother, Taisiya Zakharovna (née Shcherbak), was of Ukrainian descent.

His educated mother encouraged his literary and scientific learnings and raised him in the Russian Orthodox faith.

The Gulag Archipelago was composed from 1958 to 1967, and has sold over thirty million copies in thirty-five languages. It was a three-volume, seven-part work on the Soviet prison camp system, which drew from Solzhenitsyn's experiences and the testimony of 256 former prisoners and Solzhenitsyn's own research into the history of the Russian penal system.

It discusses the system's origins from the founding of the Communist regime, with Vladimir Lenin having responsibility, detailing interrogation procedures, prisoner transports, prison camp culture, prisoner uprisings and revolts such as the Kengir uprising, and the practice of internal exile.

On 8 August 1971, the KGB allegedly attempted to assassinate Solzhenitsyn using an unknown chemical agent (most likely ricin) with an experimental gel-based delivery method. The attempt left him seriously ill, but he survived.

Although The Gulag Archipelago was not published in the Soviet Union, it was extensively criticized by the Party-controlled Soviet press.

On 19 September 1974, it was approved a large-scale operation to discredit Solzhenitsyn and his family and cut his communications with Soviet dissidents.

In a series of writings, speeches, and interviews after his return to his native Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn spoke about his admiration for the local self-government he had witnessed first hand in Switzerland and New England. He praised 'the sensible and sure process of grassroots democracy, in which the local population solves most of its problems on its own, not waiting for the decisions of higher authorities.'

Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure near Moscow on 3 August 2008, at the age of 89.

More information: New Criterion

There is nothing that so assists the awakening 
of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts 
about one's own transgressions, errors, mistakes.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn