Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn(1918-2008).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian poet,dramatist,novelist,and artist,notably with his work that awares the world about Gulag,a Soviet Union labour camp system.He received Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970,and exiled from Soviet Union in 1974.

He was born in Caucasus region of Kislodovsk,with humble beginning as peasant in mountainous region.Solzhenitsyn then studied mathematics in Rostov State University,and in the same time correspondent course in Moscow Institute of Philosophy.

During World War II, he served as the commander of an artillery unit in the Red Army,and February 1945 was his worst memories ever.He was arrested while serving at East Prussia,for derogatory comments about Josef Stalin.He was accused in Article 58 of Soviet Criminal code,and served in eight years in labour camp.

From March 1953, Solzhenitsyn began a sentence of internal exile for life at Kok-Terek in southern Kazakhstan. His undiagnosed cancer spread, until, by the end of the year, he was close to death. However, in 1954, he was permitted to be treated in a hospital in Tashkent, where he was cured.

Solzhenitsyn gradually turned into a philosophically-minded man in prison. He repented for what he did as a Red Army captain and in prison compared himself with the perpetrators of the Gulag ("I remember myself in my captain's shoulder boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: 'So were we any better?'") His transformation is described at some length in the fourth part of The Gulag Archipelago ("The Soul and Barbed Wire").

In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He could not receive the prize personally in Stockholm at that time, since he was afraid he would not be let back into the Soviet Union. Instead, it was suggested he should receive the prize in a special ceremony at the Swedish embassy in Moscow. The Swedish government refused to accept this solution, since such a ceremony and the ensuing media coverage might upset the Soviet Union and damage Sweden's relations to the superpower. Instead, Solzhenitsyn received his prize at the 1974 ceremony after he had been deported from the Soviet Union.

The Gulag Archipelago was a three-volume work on the Soviet prison camp system. It was based upon Solzhenitsyn's own experience as well as the testimony of 227 former prisoners and Solzhenitsyn's own research into the history of the penal system. It discussed the system's origins from the very founding of the Communist regime, with Lenin himself having responsibility, detailing interrogation procedures, prisoner transports, prison camp culture, prisoner uprisings and revolts, and the practice of internal exile. The appearance of the book in the West put the word gulag into the Western political vocabulary and guaranteed swift retribution from the Soviet authorities.

Only in 1994,his Russian nationality has been restored,Solzhenitsyn with his wife Natalia return to Russia,and live in his dacha until the day he died.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's bibliography:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962; novel)
An Incident at Krechetovka Station (1963; novella)
Matryona's Place (1963; novella)
For the Good of the Cause (1964; novella)
The First Circle (1968; novel)
Cancer Ward (1968; novel)
The Love-Girl and the Innocent (1969; play), aka The Prisoner and the Camp Hooker or The Tenderfoot and the Tart.
August 1914 (1971). The beginning of a history of the birth of the USSR in an historical novel. The novel centers on the disastrous loss in the Battle of Tannenberg (1914) in August, 1914, and the ineptitude of the military leadership. Other works, similarly titled, follow the story: see The Red Wheel (overall title).
The Gulag Archipelago (three volumes) (1973–1978), not a memoir, but a history of the entire process of developing and administering a police state in the Soviet Union.
Prussian Nights (Finished in 1951, first published in 1974; poetry)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1974
Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, A Letter to the Soviet leaders, Collins: Harvill Press (1974), ISBN 0-06-013913-7
The Oak and the Calf (1975)
Lenin in Zürich (1976; separate publication of chapters on Lenin, none of them published before this point, from The Red Wheel. They were later incorporated into the 1984 edition of the expanded August, 1914.)
Warning to the West (1976; 5 speeches (translated to English), 3 to the Americans in 1975 and 2 to the British in 1976)
Harvard Commencement Address (1978) link
The Mortal Danger: Misconceptions about Soviet Russia and the Threat to America (1980)
Pluralists (1983; political pamphlet)
November 1916 (1983; novel)
Victory Celebration (1983)
Prisoners (1983)
Godlessness, the First Step to the Gulag. Templeton Prize Address, London, May 10 (1983)
August 1914 (1984; novel, much-expanded edition)
Rebuilding Russia (1990)
March 1917 (1990)
April 1917
The Russian Question (1995)
Invisible Allies (1997)
Russia under Avalanche (Россия в обвале,1998; political pamphlet) Complete text in Russian
Two Hundred Years Together (2003) on Russian-Jewish relations since 1772, aroused ambiguous public response.

source:Wikipedia.org and my own book,The Gulag Archipelago.