Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at the age of 89

The Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who attained international renown in the 1960s and 1970s for a series of works of literature criticising the Communist system in the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 89.

Solzhenitsyn was born on 11 December 1918 in Kislovodsk. He was raised by his mother and aunt as his father died six months before he was born.

He went on to study mathematics at Rostov University and later took a correspondence course from the Instutute of History, Philosophy and Literature in Moscow.

After graduating in 1941, Solzhenitsyn served in the Red Army during World War II, initially driving horse-drawn carriages before training and being appointed as commander of an artillery unit. He served in this position until his arrest in 1945.

Sentenced

Solzhenitsyn was accused of producing anti-Soviet propaganda after criticising the handling of the war in a letter to a school friend and using veiled references to Stalin. He was sentenced to eight years in the Soviet prison system, or Gulag.

He served the first part of his sentence in various camps, before being transferred to a scientific research facility and finally being sent to a special camp for political prisoners in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan.

After his release in 1953, Solzhenitsyn was sent into "exile for life" in Kor-Terek, southern Kazakhstan. He taught in a school and spent his evenings writing in secret, and during this time he also underwent treatment for cancer.

Secret writings

He later described this time, saying: "During all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared that this would become known."

He finally approached Alexander Tvardovsky, and poet and editor, in 1961 with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was published a year later in the Soviet Union. He did not have another book published in his native country until 1990, with his subsequent books being published abroad.

The KGB seized some of his manuscripts in 1965, including The First Circle, but Solzhenitsyn continued to work on his writing.

In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for this book, along with his other novels The First Circle and Cancer Ward. However, he was unable to receive the prize in Sweden until 1974 after he was exiled from the Soviet Union following the publication of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago.

Together with One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn's three-volume The Gulag Archipelago, which were published between 1973 and 1978, helped to draw the world's attention to the ruthless prison camp system used by the Soviet Union to control political and other dissidents, which was introduced under Stalin in the 1930s and which continued until the demise of Communism.

Final days

Solzhenitsyn spent most of the next 20 years in exile in the United States. He returned to Russia in 1994 with his second wife, Natalia, after the restoration of his Russian citizenship. Their sons remained in the US, although one later came to work in Moscow.

He remained a controversial figure after his return to Russia and was critical of the direction of the country following the fall of communism, particularly attacking materialism and corruption.

However, he had a better relationship with former president Vladimir Putin, who visited his home last year and awarded him the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his humanitarian work.

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