In almost half a century, more than 30 million of his books have been sold worldwide and translated into some 40 languages. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Solzhenitsyn owed his initial success to Khrushchev’s decision to allow Ivan Denisovich to be published in a popular journal. Khrushchev believed its publication would advance the liberal line he had promoted since his secret speech in 1956 on the crimes of Stalin. But soon after the story appeared, Khrushchev was replaced by hard-liners, and they campaigned to silence its author.

The dissident writer

Born December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk. Served as the commander of an antiartillery unit of the Red army during WWII. A graduate from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at Rostov University

Arrested for writing derogatory remarks about Stalin and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp followed by permanent internal exile. He had referred to Stalin as “the whiskered one”, Khozyain (The Master) and Balabos (boss)

His first book, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is essentially about his experiences in the Ekibastuz camp in Kazakhstan. The book, published in 1962 by order of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, gained national as well as international recognition

The First Circle, a book about inmates in one of Stalin’s “special camps” for scientists who were deemed politically unreliable but whose skills were essential

His non-fiction Gulag Archipelago trilogy, written between 1958 and 1968 published in the west in 1973, describes the savagery of the Soviet state under Stalin. It helped dispel the lingering sympathy nurtured by a few leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe

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