Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn short biography. Brief biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In an interview, Alexander Solzhenitsyn admitted that he devoted his life to the Russian revolution. What did the author of the novel "In the First Circle" mean? contains hidden tragic twists and turns. The writer considered it his duty to testify about them. Solzhenitsyn's works are a significant contribution to the historical science of the 20th century.

short biography

Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isaevich was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk. He has been active in literature since his youth. Before the war, he was most interested in the history of the First World War. this topic future writer, a dissident and dedicated his first literary works.

The creative and life path of Solzhenitsyn is unique. Becoming a witness and participant in important historical events is happiness for a writer, but great tragedy for a person.

Solzhenitsyn met the beginning of the war in Moscow. Here he studied at the correspondence department of the Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature. Behind him was Rostov University. Ahead - officer school, intelligence and arrest. In the late nineties in the literary magazine " New world” Solzhenitsyn’s works were published, in which the author reflected his military experience. And he had a big one.

As an artillery officer, the future writer went from Orel to the events of this period, years later he dedicated the works “Zhelyabug settlements”, “Adlig Schvenkitten”. He ended up in the very places where the army of General Samsonov once passed. Solzhenitsyn devoted the book The Red Wheel to the events of 1914.

Captain Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945. This was followed by long years of prisons, camps, exile. After rehabilitation in 1957, he taught for some time in a rural school, not far from Ryazan. Solzhenitsyn rented a room from a local resident - Matryona Zakharovna, who later became the prototype main character story "Matryona yard".

Underground Writer

In his autobiographical book A Calf Butted an Oak, Solzhenitsyn admitted that before his arrest, although he was drawn to literature, it was quite unconscious. IN Peaceful time, at large, he was upset that fresh topics for stories were not easy to find. What would have been if he had not been imprisoned?

Themes for short stories, novels and novels were born in transit, in camp barracks, in prison cells. Unable to write down his thoughts on paper, he created entire chapters of the novels The Gulag Archipelago and The First Circle in his mind, and then memorized them.

After his release, Alexander Isaevich continued to write. In the 1950s, publishing your works seemed an impossible dream. But he did not stop writing, believing that his work would not be lost, that at least descendants would read plays, stories and novels.

Solzhenitsyn was able to publish his first works only in 1963. Books, as separate editions, appeared much later. At home, the writer was able to print stories in the "New World". But it was also an incredible blessing.

Disease

To memorize what was written and then burn it - a method that Solzhenitsyn used more than once to preserve his works. But when the doctors told him in exile that he had only a few weeks left to live, he was afraid, first of all, that the reader would never see what he had created. There was no one to save Solzhenitsyn's works. Friends are in the camps. Mother died. His wife divorced him in absentia and married another. Solzhenitsyn rolled up the manuscripts that he managed to write, then hid them in a champagne bottle, buried this bottle in the garden. And he went to Tashkent to die ...

However, he survived. With a difficult diagnosis, recovery seemed like an omen from above. In the spring of 1954, Solzhenitsyn wrote "The Republic of Labor" - the first work, during the creation of which the underground writer knew the happiness not to destroy passage after passage, but to be able to read his own work in full.

"In the first circle"

In the literary underground, a novel about a sharashka was written. The prototypes of the main characters of the novel "In the First Circle" were the author himself and his acquaintances. But, despite all the precautions, as well as the desire to publish the work in a light version, only KGB officers had a chance to read it. In Russia, the novel "In the First Circle" was published only in 1990. In the West - twenty-two years earlier.

"One day of Ivan Denisovich"

The camp is a special world. It has nothing to do with the one in which free people live. In the camp, everyone survives and dies in their own way. In the first published work of Solzhenitsyn, only one day in the life of the hero is depicted. The author knew firsthand about camp life. That is why the reader is so struck by the rough and truthful realism present in the story written by Solzhenitsyn.

The books of this writer caused a resonance in the world society, primarily due to their authenticity. Solzhenitsyn believed that a writer's talent fades, and then dies altogether, if in his work he seeks to bypass the truth. And therefore, being in absolute literary isolation for a long time and not being able to publish the results of his many years of work, he did not envy the success of the representatives of the so-called socialist realism. The Union of Writers expelled Tsvetaeva, rejected Pasternak and Akhmatova. Did not accept Bulgakov. In this world, talents, if they appeared, quickly perished.

Publication history

Solzhenitsyn did not dare to sign the manuscript sent to the editors of Novy Mir with his own name. There was almost no hope that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich would see the light of day. Long agonizing months have passed since one of the writer's friends sent several sheets of paper written in small handwriting to the staff of the country's chief literary publishing house when suddenly an invitation came from Tvardovsky.

Author of "Vasily Terkin" and part-time Chief Editor magazine "New World" read the manuscript of an unknown author thanks to Anna Berzer. An employee of the publishing house invited Tvardovsky to read the story, uttering a phrase that became decisive: "This is about camp life, through the eyes of a simple peasant." The great Soviet poet, author of a military-patriotic poem, came from a simple peasant family. And therefore, the work, in which the narration is conducted on behalf of a "simple peasant", he was very interested.

"The Gulag Archipelago"

The novel about the inhabitants of Stalin's camps Solzhenitsyn has been creating for more than ten years. The work was first published in France. In 1969, the Gulag Archipelago was completed. However, publishing such a work in the Soviet Union was not only difficult, but also risky. One of the writer's assistants, who reprinted the first volume of the work, became a victim of persecution by the KGB. As a result of the arrest and five days of uninterrupted interrogation, the now middle-aged woman testified against Solzhenitsyn. And then she committed suicide.

After these events, the writer had no doubts about the need to print the Archipelago abroad.

Abroad

Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isaevich was expelled from Soviet Union a few months after the release of the novel The Gulag Archipelago. The writer was accused of treason. The nature of the crime allegedly committed by Solzhenitsyn was widely reported in the Soviet media. In particular, the author of The Archipelago was accused of aiding the Vlasovites during the war. But nothing was said about the content of the sensational book.

Until the last days of his life, Solzhenitsyn did not stop his literary and social activities. In an interview with a foreign periodical in the early eighties, the Russian writer expressed confidence that he would be able to return to his homeland. Then it seemed unlikely.

Return

In 1990 Solzhenitsyn returned. In Russia, he wrote many articles on current political and public topics. The writer transferred a significant part of the fees in support of prisoners and their families. One of the awards is in favor of nuclear power plants. But it should be noted that the writer nevertheless refused the Order of the Holy Apostle, motivating his act by unwillingness to accept an award from the supreme power, which brought the country to its current deplorable state.

Solzhenitsyn's works are a valuable contribution to Russian literature. In Soviet times, he was considered a dissident and a nationalist. Solzhenitsyn did not agree with this opinion, arguing that he was a Russian writer who above all loves his Fatherland.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn introduced a fundamentally new vision of life into Russian literature. His books confirm the idea that the writer is the chosen person on earth. It is given to him to convey vividly and sensually what others do not notice. This is evident in his books. The author linked history and literature into one whole. And the starting point for the creation of works was 1917. proved with his work that it was in the indicated year that everything that had its continuation in the next time period happened very briefly.

On December 11, 1918, a boy was born, who was given the name Alexander. It was in Kislovodsk. When the baby grew up, his family moved to Rostov. Sasha went to school in this city. During the years of study, he begins to try himself as a writer, creating poems and

After graduation, he continued his studies at the University of Rostov as a teacher of mathematics. The student's learning outcomes were excellent. The university was graduated with honors. All this time, not for a single day, Solzhenitsyn did not give up his passion for literary creativity. Studying in the last year, he entered the Moscow Institute of Literature in absentia, but due to the outbreak of World War II, he could not complete his studies.

Alexander Isaevich was always distinguished by poor health, but this did not prevent him from going to the front. He studied military affairs at the Kostroma School and rose to the rank of captain. For participation in hostilities has awards. At the front, his favorite pastime was keeping a personal diary.

Note! Solzhenitsyn had a friend, Adam Vitkevich. In letters addressed to him, Alexander described his views on Stalin's policy. For this he was sentenced to 8 years in the camps.

In 1952, the writer felt unwell. During this period, he was diagnosed with cancer. He was treated for a long time and came to the conclusion that while writing books, he has a reprieve from death. And so it happened, Alexander Isaevich lived a long life.

After for long years camp moves to live in Ryazan, where he works as a school teacher. And he still writes. But it turns out that the KGB checks his archives and prohibits publication. In the end, this "fuss" leads to the fact that Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Writers' Union.

His texts are published abroad. After the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Isaevich was arrested and expelled from the country. The writer was forced to leave the Soviet Union and travel around Europe.

1994 is the time to return to Russia. Collected works are published in our country in the 2000s. On August 3, 2008, the author of The Gulag dies in Moscow from heart failure.

Personal life

The writer had several hobbies that grew into serious relationship. For example, he had 2 wives and both were named Natalya.

Solzhenitsyn has a continuation in the form of three sons. During his life, Alexander Isaevich was awarded more than 20 times. The most significant, of course, was the Nobel Prize for him. This author contemporary critics called Tolstoy or Dostoevsky of their time.

On the grave of Alexander Isaevich, a stone cross was erected, which was designed by Dmitry Shakhovskoy.

The table shows Solzhenitsyn's biography by date, only the most important

date	Event
11.12.1918	Born in Kislovodsk
1924	Moving to Rostov
1936-1941	Education at the Pedagogical University
1939	Admission to the Literary Institute of Moscow
1941	Mobilization
1943-1945	Front
9.02.1945	Arrest
27.07.1945	8 years of camps
1950	Gets cancer
1953	Tashkent. Treatment for the disease
02.1956	Rehabilitation by decision of the Supreme Council
1957	Life in Ryazan
1962	Membership in the Writers' Union
1964	Work as a writer
09.1965	Archives confiscated by the KGB
05.1967	The beginning of the "persecution" of the writer
1968	They print abroad cancer corps"and" In the first circle "
11.1969	Expulsion from the Writers' Union
1970	Nobel Prize in Literature
1973	Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago is being printed in France
02.1974	He was declared a traitor to the motherland and expelled from the USSR
04.1976	USA trip
10.1976	Moving to the USA
16.10.1990	Return of Russian citizenship by decree of the President.
27.05.1994	Return to Russia
1997	Obtaining the title - Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences
1998	Presentation of the gold medal named after M.V. Lomonosov
03.08.2008	The death of the writer in Moscow

Unfortunately, his autobiography has not been preserved. But in many sources the biography of the writer is presented both in a very short version and in sufficient detail.

Useful video: Alexander Solzhenitsyn - biography

Different opinions

Who really is the writer of the 20th century Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn? In the modern world of literature, disputes around this name do not subside. One group of literary scholars speak of a great talent for writing. The other scolds and accuses of betrayal.

In fact, it is impossible to unequivocally judge Alexander Isaevich. On the one hand, Khrushchev asked to belittle all the successes of the country during Stalin's rule. On the other hand, Alexander Isaevich can be counted among the good writers. But his name is outrageous. Therefore, it is impossible to answer the question unambiguously.

Books

For all my literary activity Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote so many works that they can hardly fit into thirty volumes. He tried himself in different genres. He wrote stories: "Matryona Dvor", "Ego", "Easter procession"," Nastenka.

He tried his hand at dramaturgy: "The Deer and the Shalashovka", "Candle in the Wind", "The Parasite". He published many journalistic essays: "The Nobel Lecture", "The Shredding of Freedom", "Our Pluralists", "How Should We Equip Russia?" and many others.

Solzhenitsyn "How do we equip Russia"

What Wikipedia says

First, it is logical to give a link to the article. Here it is: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solzhenitsyn,_Alexander_Isaevich

Wikipedia contains a large article on the personality and work of Solzhenitsyn. It names the main dates associated with creativity and personal life events. All periods of life are covered in detail, starting from early childhood and ending with the last years of life. It is told about the writer's family and children.

Criticism in relation to creativity is objectively presented. The main works are named. It is also important to note that references are given to the dates when some of the works were filmed. There are archival documents at the end of the article.

creative way

All creative heritage Solzhenitsyn can be clearly divided into two parts:

• the first is historical works;
• the second is autobiographical.

It is logical to include such texts as "Two Hundred Years Together", "Reflections on the February Revolution", "Red Wheel", "August 14th" into the first group.

The second group consists of works such as "Zakhar Kalita", "Cancer Ward", "Love the Revolution", "The Incident at the Kochetovka Station", "In the First Circle", "One Day of a Convict".

Books differ in a favorable way in that their author tries to show wide epic scenes. People in novels and short stories are easily recognizable.

Important! The work of Alexander Isaevich was highly appreciated by such venerable writers as Korney Chukovsky, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova.

Nobel Prize

In 1970 Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution to literature. At that time, television and radio broadcasting of the Soviet Union preferred to hush up the truth about fellow citizens, so the fact of the Nobel Prize was not advertised.

Alexander Isaevich did not go to the award ceremony in Sweden, but listened to the broadcast of this event on the radio with his family and friends. Personally, the prize was awarded to the writer 4 years later - in 1974.

Presentation of the Nobel Prize

Photo

Below we present various photographs depicting Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.

Author and history

The historical process in the life of Alexander Isaevich played a big role. However, like the personality of the writer in historical process. The phenomenon of Solzhenitsyn's creativity is that he does not simply describe certain historical facts in their works. It is important that the books reflect everything that people really experienced in that time period. If the author speaks of a revolution, he is not simply stating a fact, but is trying to understand the reasons for actions and predict what this may lead to in the future.

If we talk about the war, then Solzhenitsyn knows about it firsthand. He himself fought, rose to the rank of captain, sniffed gunpowder, as they say. And the author speaks clearly and simply about life there, beyond the perimeter surrounded by barbed wire, does not invent or embellish anything.

Summing up, I would like to note that Solzhenitsyn's personality is probably the most noticeable both in literature and in the history of the second half of the twentieth century. These texts should not just be read, but passed through your own soul and heart.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is an outstanding Russian writer whose books are known and read all over the world. At home, he was recognized as a dissident, as a result of which he spent 8 years in camps.

His main work The Gulag Archipelago, which became a real sensation, is still of interest to readers today. In 1970, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

From this article you will learn about the main events of it, and about what you may never have known. If you need concise information about a writer, take a look at .

So, before you is a biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Brief biography of Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk. His father, Isaakiy Semenovich, was a simple peasant. He tragically died hunting before the birth of his son.

As a result, little Sasha was raised only by her mother, Taisiya Zakharovna. Due to complete ruin, during the period October revolution they lived in extreme poverty.

Childhood and youth

Solzhenitsyn's conflicts with the new Soviet government began as soon as he went to school. Since a love of religion was instilled in him from childhood, the boy wore a cross on his chest and flatly refused to become a pioneer.

Naturally, such “antics” entailed serious consequences. However, childish piety soon disappeared somewhere. Serious changes have taken place in Solzhenitsyn's biography.

Communist propaganda successfully influenced Alexander's worldview. He changed his beliefs and adopted the party's policies.

Later on he own will joined the ranks of the Komsomol. As a teenager, Solzhenitsyn became seriously interested in reading world classics. Even then, he dreamed of writing a book about revolutionary events.

However, when the time came, he decided to enter the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Rostov State University.

For some reason, it seemed to the young man that it was mathematicians who were really intelligent people, among whom he himself wanted to be.

Solzhenitsyn's studies were easy, so he graduated from the university with honors. While still a student, he was very fond of theatrical art. An interesting fact in the biography of Solzhenitsyn is that at one time he seriously wanted to connect his life with the theater.

World War II suddenly broke out and young man I had to go to defend my homeland. But due to health problems, they refused to accept him for service as an ordinary soldier.

Then Alexander decided to complete the officer courses in order to go to the front without fail. He succeeded, as a result of which he ended up in an artillery regiment with the rank of lieutenant.

Solzhenitsyn showed himself to be a good warrior and was awarded the Orders of the Red Star and.

Arrest and imprisonment

Having risen to the rank of captain, Alexander Isaevich continued to fight successfully, but his antipathy towards. Solzhenitsyn criticized the leader and was dissatisfied with his actions.

He shared his thoughts with a front-line comrade, with whom he corresponded. Once one of these letters hit the table of the military leadership in charge of censorship.

The authorities considered that if Solzhenitsyn was dissatisfied with the leader, then the communist system as a whole was hostile to him.

He was immediately detained, stripped of his rank and sent to the Lubyanka. There he was subjected to daily interrogations, often accompanied by sophisticated bullying.

As a result, he was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps and eternal exile at the end of his term. From that moment in the biography of Solzhenitsyn began a continuous game with death.

First, the former officer was assigned to work at a construction site. When did management find out about it? higher education, he was transferred to a special prison controlled by a closed design bureau.

However, due to a conflict with his superiors, Solzhenitsyn was redirected to a camp in the north, where he stayed for about 3 years. While there, he worked on general works and participated in one and prisoner strikes.

Once at large, the writer was forbidden to visit. He was given a job in Kazakhstan as a school teacher of mathematics and astronomy.

Dissident Solzhenitsyn

In 1956, 3 years after his death, Solzhenitsyn's case was reviewed. New power did not see the corpus delicti in his case, so he could return to . Arriving home, Alexander Isaevich began to teach at.

Since anti-Stalinist motives were traced in the work of the writer, he had support from the outside, to whom this was only at hand.

Later, however, Solzhenitsyn fell into disgrace from the incumbent general secretary. When he came to power, Solzhenitsyn's writings were generally banned.

The situation was aggravated by the fantastic popularity of the writer's works, which, without his permission, began to be printed in the United States of America and. For the Soviet leadership, Alexander Isaevich began to pose a serious threat.

Interestingly, he had the opportunity to emigrate abroad, but he chose to stay in Russia. Soon a KGB officer tried to kill Solzhenitsyn.

He injected him with poison, but the writer still managed to survive. After this poisoning, Alexander Solzhenitsyn remained seriously ill for a long time.

In 1974, he was accused of treason, stripped of his citizenship and expelled. The dissident had to change many places of residence, as his life was under constant threat.

Fortunately, he lived in relative prosperity, thanks to decent fees for his labors. He even managed to create a "Fund to help the persecuted and their families."

Traveling around the countries, Solzhenitsyn gave lectures in which he harshly criticized the communist system. But soon, he became disillusioned with American democracy, and began to criticize it too.

In other words, in Solzhenitsyn's biography there was no place for "downtime" or creative inactivity.

With the coming to power, in the USSR they revised their attitude towards the writer, and already during his time they cordially asked him to return to Russia, and even gave him a dacha in Trinity-Lykovo.

Personal life

Alexander first married at the age of 22 to Natalya Reshetkovskaya. However, their marriage fell apart due to the outbreak of war and the arrest of Solzhenitsyn.

In 1948, the NKVD "convinced" Natalya to divorce her husband. But as soon as the writer was rehabilitated, the couple began to live together again, officially legalizing their relationship.

Solzhenitsyn with his first wife - Natalia Reshetkovskaya

In the summer of 1968 Alexander Solzhenitsyn met Natalya Svetlova, who worked in the laboratory of mathematical statistics. Over time, they developed romantic relationship quickly developed into a whirlwind romance.

When the legal wife found out about this, she tried to commit suicide. Only thanks to timely intervention, she managed to save her life.

A few years later, Solzhenitsyn was still able to file a divorce from Reshetovskaya and marry Svetlova. This marriage turned out to be a happy one.

Solzhenitsyn with his second wife - Natalia Svetlova

The second wife became for Alexander Isaevich not only a beloved wife, but also a reliable support in life. They jointly raised 4 sons - Ignat, Stepan, Dmitry and Yermolai. Ignat managed to become outstanding pianist and conductor.

Creativity Solzhenitsyn

During his life, Alexander Isaevich wrote many novels, short stories, poems and poems. At dawn writing activity he was interested in revolutionary military theme. The Red Wheel is considered one of the best novels this direction.

He also has many autobiographical works. These include the poem "Dorozhenka", the story "Zakhar Kalita", as well as famous novel"Cancer Ward", which tells about the fate of cancer patients.

However, his most famous and iconic work, of course, is the Gulag Archipelago.

At work

At the same time, it should be noted that Solzhenitsyn also had other, no less famous works of the camp direction: “In the First Circle” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”.

Thanks to this, the reader can give his own assessment of a particular action taking place in the plot. Most of Solzhenitsyn's books contain historical figures.

His work was highly appreciated by such artists as Valentin Rasputin, Andrei Tarkovsky.

It is interesting that, having repeatedly communicated with Solzhenitsyn and knew his biography well, he argued that the state for the writer has always remained an indestructible constant, despite the constant criticism of the current government.

Death

Solzhenitsyn spent the last years of his biography at his dacha. He had serious problems with health. This is not surprising, since the poisoning and the years spent in the camps could not pass without a trace.

In addition, Solzhenitsyn survived a serious hypertensive crisis and underwent a difficult operation, after which only his right hand remained working.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008, having lived to be 89 years old. Death was due to acute heart failure. His grave is located at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.

If you liked the biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, share it in in social networks. If you generally like the biographies of great people and from their lives, subscribe to the site IinterestingFakty.org. It's always interesting with us!

Liked the post? Press any button.

Soviet literature

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.

Biography

SOLZHENITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAEVICH (1918-2008), Russian writer.

Born December 11 in Kislovodsk. The writer's paternal ancestors were peasants. Father, Isaakiy Semenovich, received a university education. From University to First world war volunteered for the front. Returning from the war, he was mortally wounded while hunting and died six months before the birth of his son.

Mother, Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak, came from a family of a wealthy Kuban landowner.

The first years Solzhenitsyn lived in Kislovodsk, in 1924 he moved with his mother to Rostov-on-Don.

Already in his youth, Solzhenitsyn realized himself as a writer. In 1937 he conceives historical novel about the beginning of the First World War and begins to collect materials for its creation. Later, this idea was embodied in August the Fourteenth: the first part ("knot") of the historical narrative of the Red Wheel.

In 1941 Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Department of Rostov University. Even earlier, in 1939, he entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and Art. The war prevented him from graduating from college. After training at the artillery school in Kostroma in 1942, he was sent to the front and was appointed commander of a sound reconnaissance battery.

Solzhenitsyn went through the battle path from Orel to East Prussia, received the rank of captain, and was awarded orders. At the end of January 1945, he led the battery out of encirclement.

On February 9, 1945, Solzhenitsyn was arrested: military censorship drew attention to his correspondence with his friend Nikolai Vitkevich. The letters contained sharp assessments of Stalin and the orders he had established, spoke of the deceitfulness of modern Soviet literature. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years in the camps and eternal exile. He served his term in New Jerusalem near Moscow, then on the construction of a residential building in Moscow. Then - in a "sharashka" (a secret research institute where prisoners worked) in the village of Marfino near Moscow. 1950-1953 he spent in the camp (in Kazakhstan), was in the general camp work.

After the end of his term of imprisonment (February 1953), Solzhenitsyn was sent into indefinite exile. He began to teach mathematics in the district center of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region of Kazakhstan. On February 3, 1956, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union released Solzhenitsyn from exile, and a year later he and Vitkevich were declared completely innocent: criticism of Stalin and literary works was recognized as fair and not contrary to socialist ideology.

In 1956 Solzhenitsyn moved to Russia - in a small village Ryazan region where he worked as a teacher. A year later he moved to Ryazan.

Even in the camp, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with cancer, and on February 12, 1952, he underwent an operation. During his exile, Solzhenitsyn was treated twice at the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary, using various medicinal plants. Contrary to the expectations of doctors, the malignant tumor disappeared. In his healing, the recent prisoner saw a manifestation of Divine will - a command to tell the world about Soviet prisons and camps, to reveal the truth to those who do not know anything about it or do not want to know.

Solzhenitsyn wrote the first surviving works in the camp. These are poems and a satirical play The Feast of the Victors.

In the winter of 1950-1951, Solzhenitsyn conceived a story about one day of a prisoner. In 1959, the story Shch-854 (One Day of a Prisoner) was written. Sch-854 is the camp number of the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a prisoner (convict) in a Soviet concentration camp.

In the autumn of 1961, the editor-in-chief of the journal Novy Mir, A. T. Tvardovsky, became acquainted with the story. Tvardovsky received permission to publish the story personally from the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union N. S. Khrushchev. Shch-854 under a changed title - One day of Ivan Denisovich - was published in No. 11 of the Novy Mir magazine for 1962. For the sake of publishing the story, Solzhenitsyn was forced to soften some details of the life of prisoners. The original text of the story was first published by the Parisian publishing house "Ymca press" in 1973. But Solzhenitsyn retained the title One day of Ivan Denisovich.

The publication of the story was a historic event. Solzhenitsyn became known throughout the country.

For the first time about the camp world was said naked truth. There were publications that claimed that the writer was exaggerating. But the enthusiastic perception of the story prevailed. On a short time Solzhenitsyn was officially recognized.

The action of the story fits in one day - from the rise to the lights out. The narration is conducted on behalf of the author, but Solzhenitsyn constantly resorts to improperly direct speech: in the author's words one can hear the voice of the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, his assessments and opinions (Shukhov, a former peasant and soldier, was sentenced as a "spy" for ten years in camps for being taken prisoner).

A distinctive feature of the poetics of the story is the neutrality of tone, when terrible, unnatural events and conditions of camp existence are reported as something familiar, ordinary, as something that should be well known to readers. This creates a "presence effect" of the reader during the depicted events.

The day of Shukhov described in the story is devoid of terrible, tragic events, and the character evaluates it as happy. But the existence of Ivan Denisovich is completely hopeless: in order to ensure an elementary existence (feeding himself in the camp, bartering tobacco or carrying a hacksaw past the guards), Shukhov must dodge and often risk himself. The reader is prompted to conclude: what were Shukhov's other days, if this one - full of dangers and humiliations - seemed happy?

Shukhov is an ordinary person, not a hero. A believer, but not ready to give his life for the faith, Ivan Denisovich is distinguished by tenacity, the ability to exist in unbearable circumstances. Shukhov's behavior is not heroic, but natural, not going beyond the scope of moral precepts. He is opposed to another prisoner, the "jackal" Fetyukov, who has lost his self-esteem, is ready to lick other people's bowls, to humiliate himself. Heroic behavior in the camp is simply impossible, as the example of another character, captain (second-rank captain) Buinovsky, shows.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is almost a documentary work: the characters, with the exception of the protagonist, have prototypes among people whom the author met in the camp.

Documentation - distinguishing feature almost all of the writer's works. Life for him is more symbolic and meaningful than literary fiction.

In 1964 One Day Ivan Denisovich was nominated for the Lenin Prize. But Solzhenitsyn did not receive the Lenin Prize: the Soviet authorities sought to erase the memory of the Stalinist terror.

A few months after Ivan Denisovich's One Day, Solzhenitsyn's story Matrenin Dvor was published in No. 1 of Novy Mir, 1963. Initially, the story Matrenin Dvor was called A village without a righteous man does not stand - according to a Russian proverb dating back to the biblical Book of Genesis. The name Matrenin Dvor belongs to Tvardovsky. Like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, this work was autobiographical and based on real events in the life of people known to the author. The prototype of the main character is the Vladimir peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova, with whom the writer lived, the narration, as in a number of later stories by Solzhenitsyn, is told in the first person, on behalf of the teacher Ignatich (patronymic is consonant with the author's - Isaevich), who moves to European Russia from far links.

Solzhenitsyn portrays the heroine living in poverty, having lost her husband and children, but spiritually not broken by hardships and grief. Matryona is opposed to mercenary and unfriendly fellow villagers who consider her a "fool". Despite everything, Matrena did not become embittered, she remained compassionate, open and disinterested.

Matryona from Solzhenitsyn's story is the embodiment of the best features of a Russian peasant woman, her face is like the face of a saint on an icon, her life is almost life. The house - a through symbol of the story - is correlated with the ark of the biblical righteous Noah, in which his family is saved from the flood along with pairs of all earthly animals. In Matryona's house, animals from Noah's Ark are associated with a goat and a cat.

But the spiritually righteous Matryona is still not perfect. The dead Soviet ideology penetrates into life, into the house of the heroine of the story (the signs of this ideology in Solzhenitsyn's text are a poster on the wall and the radio in Matryona's house that never stops).

The life of a saint must end with a happy death, uniting her with God. Such is the law of hagiographical genre. However, Matryona's death is bitterly absurd. The brother of the late husband, the greedy old man Thaddeus, who once loved her, forces Matryona to give him the upper room (hut-log house). At a railway crossing, while transporting logs from a dismantled room, Matryona falls under a train, which personifies a mechanical, inanimate force hostile to the natural principle, embodied by Matryona. The death of the heroine symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.

In 1963-1966, three more stories for Solzhenitsyn were published in Novy Mir: The Case at the Krechetovka Station (No. 1 for 1963, the author's title - The Case at the Kochetovka Station - was changed at the insistence of the editors due to the confrontation between Novy Mir and the conservative magazine "October", headed by the writer V.A. Kochetov), ​​For the benefit of the cause (No. 7 for 1963), Zakhar-Kalita (No. 1 for 1966). After 1966, the writer's works were not published in his homeland until the turn of 1989, when the Nobel lecture and chapters from the book The Gulag Archipelago were published in the journal Novy Mir.

In 1964, for the sake of publishing the novel in A. T. Tvardovsky's Novy Mir, Solzhenitsyn revised the novel, softening the criticism of Soviet reality. Instead of ninety-six written chapters, the text contained only eighty-seven. The original version was about an attempt by a high-ranking Soviet diplomat to prevent Stalin's agents from stealing the secret of atomic weapons from the United States. He is convinced that with the atomic bomb, the Soviet dictatorial regime will be invincible and can conquer the still free countries of the West. For publication, the plot was changed: a Soviet doctor passed on to the West information about a wonderful medicine that the Soviet authorities kept in deep secrecy.

Censorship nevertheless banned the publication. Solzhenitsyn later restored the original text with minor changes.

The characters of the novel are fairly accurate portraits real people, prisoners "sharashka" in the suburban village of Marfino. The action of the novel fits into less than three days - on the eve of 1950. In most chapters, the events do not leave the walls of the Marfin "sharashka". Thus, the story becomes extremely rich.

"Sharashka" is male fraternity in which bold, free discussions are held about art, about the meaning of being, about the nature of socialism. (Participants in disputes try not to think about spies and informers). But "sharashka" is also the realm of death, lifetime, earthly hell. The symbolism of death is invariably present in the novel. One of the prisoners, recalling the tragedy of Goethe Faust, likens the "sharagi" to the grave in which the servants of the devil Mephistopheles hide the body of Faust - the sage, philosopher. But if in Goethe's tragedy God frees the soul of Faust from the power of the devil, then the Marfinian zeks do not believe in salvation.

The Marfin prisoners are privileged prisoners. Here - in comparison with the camp - they are well fed. After all, they are scientists working on the creation of ultra-modern equipment that Stalin and his henchmen need. Prisoners must invent a device that makes it difficult to understand overheard telephone conversations(encoder).

One of the Marfin prisoners, the gifted philologist Lev Rubin (his prototype is the Germanist philologist, translator L.Z. Kopelev), will say this about the "sharashka": circle - in the first.

The image of the circles of hell is borrowed from the poem of the Italian writer Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy. In Dante's poem, hell consists of nine circles. Solzhenitsyn's hero Rubin admits an inaccuracy, comparing the inhabitants of the "sharashka" with the least guilty sinners - the virtuous non-Christian sages of Dante's poem. They are not in the first circle, but on the eve of this circle.

The novel has many storylines. This is, first of all, the story of Gleb Nerzhin, a hero who is sympathetic to the author (his last name, obviously, means “not rusty in soul”, “not succumbing to rust / rust”). Nerzhin refuses to cooperate with the unjust authorities. He rejects the offer to work on secret inventions, preferring to return to the camp where he can die.

This is the story of Lev Rubin, who despises his executioners and Stalin, but is convinced that there is another, pure, undistorted socialism. This is the line of the brilliant inventor and philosopher Dmitry Sologdin, who is ready to give his invention to the satanic authorities, but at the same time boldly dictating conditions to the executioners. The prototype of Dmitry Sologdin AI Solzhenitsyn was the Marfin prisoner - engineer and philosopher D. M. Panin; in Gleb Nerzhin, the features of Solzhenitsyn himself are visible.

The convict Spiridon, an unlearned, has his own special path, common man. The benefit of the family, relatives for him is the highest value. He bravely fought the Germans, but he also deserted when he was faced with a choice: to defend the state or take care of life. ordinary people…

Solzhenitsyn's narration is like a choir in which the author's voice sounds muffled. The writer avoids direct assessments, allowing the characters to speak out. First of all, reality itself must confirm the inhumanity, the deadening emptiness political regime those years. And only in the finale, talking about the stage followed by obstinate prisoners who refused to bring their talents to the service of executioners, the author openly breaks into the narrative.

In 1955, Solzhenitsyn conceived, and in 1963-1966 wrote the story Cancer Ward. It reflects the author's impressions of his stay in the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary and the history of his healing. The duration of the action is limited to several weeks, the scene of the action is the walls of the hospital (such a narrowing of time and space is a distinctive feature of the poetics of many of Solzhenitsyn's works).

In the ward of the "cancer ward", located in a large Central Asian city, the fates of different characters strangely connected, which would hardly have met each other in another place. The life story of the protagonist Oleg Kostoglotov recalls the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself: having served time in the camps on trumped-up charges, he is now an exile. Other patients: worker Ephraim, in civil war who shot those who disagreed with the Bolshevik authorities, and in the recent past, a civilian employee in the camp, who pushed around the prisoners; soldier Ahmadzhan, who served in the camp guard; head of the personnel department Rusanov. He feels like a second class person. Accustomed to privileges, fenced off from life, he loves the "people", but is squeamish about people. Rusanov is guilty of grave sins: he denounced a comrade, identified relatives of prisoners among workers and forced them to renounce innocently convicted.

Another character is Shulubin, who escaped repression, but lived his whole life in fear. Only now, on the eve of a difficult operation and possible death, does he begin to tell the truth about the lies, violence and fear that have enveloped the life of the country. Cancer disease equalizes patients. For some, like Ephraim and Shulubin, this is an approach to painful insight. For Rusanov - retribution, which he himself did not realize.

In Solzhenitsyn's story, cancer is also a symbol of that malignant disease that has penetrated the flesh and blood of society.

At first glance, the story ends happily: Kostoglotov is cured, he will soon be released from exile. But the camps and prisons left an indelible mark on his soul: Oleg is forced to suppress his love for the doctor Vera Gangart, as he understands that he is no longer able to bring happiness to a woman.

All attempts to print the story in the "New World" were unsuccessful. The Cancer Corps, like in the first circle, was distributed in "samizdat". The story was published for the first time in the West in 1968.

In the mid-1960s, when an official ban was imposed on the discussion of the topic of repression, the authorities began to view Solzhenitsyn as a dangerous opponent. In September 1965, one of the writer's friends, who kept his manuscripts, was searched. The Solzhenitsyn archive ended up in the State Security Committee. Since 1966, the writer's works have ceased to be printed, and already published ones were withdrawn from libraries. The KGB spread rumors that during the war Solzhenitsyn surrendered and collaborated with the Germans. In March 1967, Solzhenitsyn addressed the Fourth Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers with a letter, where he spoke about the destructive power of censorship and the fate of his works. He demanded that the Writers' Union refute the slander and resolve the issue of publishing the Cancer Ward. The leadership of the Writers' Union did not respond to this call. Solzhenitsyn's opposition to power began. He writes journalistic articles that diverge in manuscripts. From now on, journalism has become for the writer the same significant part of his work as fiction. Solzhenitsyn distributes open letters protesting against the violation of human rights and the persecution of dissidents in the Soviet Union. In November 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize. Western support public opinion made it difficult for the authorities of the Soviet Union to deal with the dissident writer. Solzhenitsyn talks about his opposition to communist power in the book A calf butted with an oak tree, first published in Paris in 1975. Since 1958, Solzhenitsyn has been working on the book Gulag Archipelago - a history of repressions, camps and prisons in the Soviet Union (Gulag - Main Directorate of Camps). The book was completed in 1968. In 1973, KGB officers seized one of the copies of the manuscript. The persecution of the writer intensified. At the end of December 1973, the first volume of the Archipelago was published in the West ... (the book was published in full in the West in 1973-1975). The word "archipelago" in the title refers to the book by A.P. Chekhov about the life of convicts on Sakhalin - Sakhalin Island. Only instead of one convict island of old Russia in Soviet times, the Archipelago was spread - many "islands". The Gulag Archipelago - at the same time historical research with elements of a parody ethnographic essay, and the author's memoirs, telling about his camp experience, and the epic of suffering, and martyrology - stories about the martyrs of the Gulag. The narrative about the Soviet concentration camps is oriented towards the text of the Bible: the creation of the Gulag is presented as the creation of the world by God “turned inside out” (a satanic anti-world is being created); seven books of the Gulag Archipelago are correlated with the seven seals of the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Theologian, according to which the Lord will judge people at the end of time. In the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn plays the role not so much of an author as of a collector of stories told by many prisoners. As in the story One day by Ivan Denisovich, the narrative is structured in such a way as to make the reader see the torment of the prisoners with their own eyes and, as it were, experience them for themselves. On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and expelled from the Soviet Union to West Germany a day later. Immediately after the writer's arrest, his wife Natalya Dmitrievna distributed in "samizdat" his article "Live not by lies" - an appeal to citizens to refuse complicity in the lies that the authorities require of them. Solzhenitsyn and his family settled in the Swiss city of Zurich, in 1976 he moved to the small town of Cavendish in US state Vermont. In op-ed articles written in exile, in speeches and lectures given to Western audiences, Solzhenitsyn critically reflects on Western liberal and democratic values. He opposes the organic unity of people, direct popular self-government to law, law, multi-party system as a condition and guarantee of human freedom in society, as opposed to the ideals of a consumer society, he puts forward the ideas of self-restraint and religious principles (Harvard speech, 1978, article Our Pluralists, 1982, Templeton Lecture, 1983). Solzhenitsyn's speeches evoked a sharp reaction from a part of the emigration, who reproached him for totalitarian sympathies, retrograde and utopianism. The grotesquely caricatured image of Solzhenitsyn - the writer Sim Simych Karnavalov was created by V. N. Voinovich in the novel Moscow-2042. In exile, Solzhenitsyn is working on the epic Red Wheel, dedicated to the pre-revolutionary years. The Red Wheel consists of four parts - "nodes": August the Fourteenth, October the Sixteenth, March the Seventeenth and April the Seventeenth. Solzhenitsyn began writing Red Wheel in the late 1960s and completed it only in the early 1990s. August the Fourteenth and the chapters of October the Sixteenth were created back in the USSR. The Red Wheel is a kind of chronicle of the revolution, which is created from fragments of different genres. Among them are a report, a protocol, a transcript (a story about the disputes between Minister Rittich and deputies of the State Duma; an “incident report”, which analyzes the street riots in the summer of 1917, fragments from newspaper articles of various political trends, etc.). Many chapters are like fragments psychological novel. They describe episodes from the life of fictional and historical characters: Colonel Vorotyntsev, his wife Alina and beloved Olda; the intellectual Lenartovich, who was in love with the revolution, General Samsonov, one of the leaders of the State Duma, Guchkov, and many others. The fragments, called by the author "screens", are original fragments - similarities of cinematographic frames with the techniques of installation and approach or removal of an imaginary movie camera. "Screens" are full of symbolic meaning. So, in one of the episodes, reflecting the retreat of the Russian army in August 1914, the image of a wheel torn off the cart, painted by fire, is a symbol of chaos, the madness of history. In the Red Wheel, Solzhenitsyn resorts to narrative techniques characteristic of modernist poetics. The author himself noted in his interviews the importance for the Red Wheel of the novels of the American modernist D. Dos Passos. The Red Wheel is built on the combination and intersection of different narrative points of view, while the same event is sometimes given in the perception of several characters (the murder of P. A. Stolypin is seen through the eyes of his killer, the terrorist M. G. Bogrov, Stolypin himself, General P. G. Kurlov and Nicholas II). The "voice" of the narrator, designed to express author's position, often enters into a dialogue with the "voices" of the characters, the true author's opinion can only be reconstructed by the reader from the whole text. Solzhenitsyn, a writer and historian, is especially fond of the reformer, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia P. A. Stolypin, who was killed a few years before the start of the main action of the Red Wheel. However, Solzhenitsyn devoted a significant part of his work to him. The Red Wheel is in many ways reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Like Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn contrasts the actors-politicians (the Bolshevik Lenin, the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky, the Cadet Milyukov, the tsarist minister Protopopov) with normal, humane, living people. The author of the Red Wheel shares Tolstoy's idea of ​​an extremely important role in the history of ordinary people. But Tolstoy's soldiers and officers were making history without realizing it. Solzhenitsyn constantly confronts his heroes with a dramatic choice - the course of events depends on their decisions. Detachment, readiness to submit to the course of events Solzhenitsyn, unlike Tolstoy, considers not a manifestation of insight and inner freedom, but a historical betrayal. For in history, according to the author of the Red Wheel, it is not fate that acts, but people, and nothing is definitively predetermined. That is why, while sympathizing with Nicholas II, the author nevertheless considers him inescapably guilty - the last Russian sovereign did not fulfill his destiny, did not keep Russia from falling into the abyss. Solzhenitsyn said that he would return to his homeland only when his books returned there, when the Gulag Archipelago was printed there. The Novy Mir magazine managed to obtain permission from the authorities to publish chapters of this book in 1989. In May 1994, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He writes a book of memoirs A grain fell between two millstones (“New World”, 1998, No. 9, 11, 1999, No. 2, 2001, No. 4), appears in newspapers and on television with assessments of the current policy of the Russian authorities. The writer accuses them of the fact that the reforms carried out in the country are ill-conceived, immoral and cause great damage to society, which caused an ambiguous attitude towards Solzhenitsyn's journalism. In 1991 Solzhenitsyn wrote the book How do we equip Russia. Powerful considerations. And in 1998, Solzhenitsyn published a book Russia in a collapse, in which he sharply criticizes economic reforms. He reflects on the need to revive the Zemstvo and the Russian national consciousness. The book Two Hundred Years Together, devoted to the Jewish question in Russia, was published. In the "New World" the writer regularly appeared in the late 1990s with literary critical articles on the work of Russian prose writers and poets. In the 1990s, Solzhenitsyn wrote several stories and novellas: Two stories (Ego, On the Edge) ("New World", 1995, 3, 5), called "two-part" stories Molodnyak, Nastenka, Apricot Jam (all - "New World" , 1995, No. 10), Zhelyabug settlements (“New World”, 1999, No. 3) and the story of Adlig Shvenkitten (“New World”, 1999, 3). The structural principle of "two-part stories" is the correlation of two halves of the text, which describe the fate of different characters, often involved in the same events, but not aware of it. Solzhenitsyn addresses the theme of guilt, betrayal and responsibility of a person for his actions. In 2001-2002, a two-volume monumental work Two Hundred Years Together was published, which the author devotes to the history of the Jewish people in Russia. The first part of the monograph covers the period from 1795 to 1916, the second - from 1916 to 1995. Editions of AI Solzhenitsyn. Collected Works (in 20 vols.). Vermont, Paris, 1978-1991; Small collected works (in 8 vols). M., 1990−1991; Collected works (in 9 vols.). M., 1999 - (publication continues); A Calf Butted an Oak: Essays literary life. M., 1996; Red Wheel: Narrative in measured terms in four knots (in 10 vols.). M., 1993−1997.

A. I. Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008 at the age of 90, at his dacha in Troitse-Lykovo, from acute heart failure. On August 6, his ashes were interred in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery behind the altar of the church of John of the Ladder, next to the grave of the historian V. O. Klyuchevsky.

On December 11, 1918, the Russian and Soviet writer Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was born in the city of Kislovodsk. Alexander never saw his father. They lived in Kislovodsk with their mother until 1924, then moved to Rostov-on-Don.

Alexander Isaevich in 1941 received a diploma from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University. A year later, after completing training at the artillery school in Kostroma, he was sent to the front as the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. As part of the battery, he went through the entire war, for which he was awarded many orders of various degrees.

But already in 1945 he was arrested for sharp criticism of I.V. Stalin and sentenced to imprisonment for eight long years, which the writer was serving in the Moscow region. After the conclusion, he remains in Kazakhstan and works as a mathematics teacher. Three years later, in 1956, the court found him innocent and considered the criticism justified. Alexander Isaevich immediately moved to Russia, to the Ryazan region, works as a teacher and writes stories. It is also worth mentioning that in 1952 Solzhenitsyn was found oncological disease and he had a successful operation.

On February 12, 1974, Alexander Isaevich was again arrested and deported from the USSR to Germany. From there, he and his family moved to Switzerland, later in 1976, and even to the USA. He was destined to return to Russia only 18 years later, in May 1994.

On August 3, 2008, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn passed away. He died at his dacha in Troitse-Lykovo from a stroke.

Disputes and discussions of Solzhenitsyn's biography and his work continue even now, ten years after his death. For some, he is a moral guide, great artist and freedom fighter. Someone will call him a distorter of history and an outstanding traitor to the Motherland. The stratum of neutral, indifferent or who have not heard anything about Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn is very thin. Isn't this evidence that we are talking about an extraordinary person.

School and university

When a person has an eventful biography, like Solzhenitsyn's, it is not easy to summarize it briefly. There are many secret pages, incomprehensible turns of events that biographers and journalists interpret to their taste, and Alexander Isaevich himself did not seek to clarify and comment.

He was born a hundred years ago, in 1918, on the eleventh of December in Kislovodsk. While still a schoolboy, he showed himself as a creative person - he studied in a drama circle, wrote articles, read a lot. At the same time, he studied at two universities: Rostov on physics and mathematics and the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History (he managed to complete two courses in absentia).

During his studies (1940) he married Natalya Reshetovskaya (Natalya Svetlova will become his second wife in 1973). Conceived and began to create a series of literary works about the revolution in Russia. The work was interrupted with the onset of the war.

War time

In the forty-first year, the war began - in Solzhenitsyn's biography, the most an important event, which directed his life, like the life of the entire Soviet state, not at all in the direction that was planned. He managed to finish the university and was sent to the service. Passed military training at the Kostroma Artillery School. Was awarded:

• Order of the Patriotic War of the second degree;
• Order of the Red Star.

Toward the end of the war, he created projects for the removal of Stalin from the leadership of the state. He shared his thoughts on how to do this in letters with his acquaintances, for which he was arrested. This information is from the book of his first wife, Natalya Reshetovskaya. It is not taken for granted by everyone: everyone knew that the content of officers' letters was under censorship control.

Work in the "sharashka"

The first arrest happened at the end of the war, in February 1945. Army captain, sound intelligence battalion commander Solzhenitsyn was sent to the Lubyanka. In July of the same year, he was sentenced to eight years in the camps and exile for life. As a specialist in sound-measuring instruments, he was assigned to a "sharashka" - a closed design bureau (design bureau).

In two years, from the forty-fifth to the forty-seventh, he was transferred five times from one institution to another. Of particular interest is the design bureau located in Marfino. This is one of the most closed pages of Solzhenitsyn's biography: the Marfina "eighth laboratory" developed secret communication systems. It is believed that it was here that the presidential "nuclear suitcase" was created. The prototype of Rubin (“In the First Circle”), Lev Kopelev, also worked here, doing technical translations of foreign literature.

At this time, the youthful idea of ​​writing about the revolution was transformed: if he managed to get out, a series of his novels would be devoted to life in the camps.

There are a number of publications that mention that Solzhenitsyn was an informant in the camp. However, intelligible evidence or refutation of this is not presented.

After Stalin's death

In the fifty-third year, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's biography makes another deadly loop - he is diagnosed with an oncological disease. After radiation therapy, stomach cancer was cured, and the nightmarish memories of that time were reflected in the work "Cancer Ward". Its publication in 1967 in the Novy Mir magazine was banned, and in 1968 the story was published abroad. It has been translated into all European languages, and was first published in 1990 at home.

After Stalin's death, Solzhenitsyn was released, but the right to move to European part did not have a country. Lived in Kazakhstan. Three years later, rehabilitation followed, which allowed him to leave Kazakhstan and settle in the Ryazan region. There he worked as a school teacher, taught mathematics. He married again Natalya Reshetovskaya, whom he divorced while in prison. He spent a lot of time in nature and wrote his "Tiny".

What is "Tiny"

Charming and wise are Solzhenitsyn's "Krokhotki" - short observations filled with philosophical meaning. He called them poems in prose, since each such miniature of several paragraphs contains a complete, deep thought and evokes an emotional response from the reader. The works were composed during the author's cycling trips.

"Tiny" was created over two years and correlates with the period 1958-1960 in Solzhenitsyn's biography: briefly, most importantly, and touching the very soul. Just during this period, in parallel with the "Tiny", the writing of the most famous works- "One day of Ivan Denisovich" and "Gulag Archipelago" (beginning of work). In Russia, poems in prose were not accepted for publication, they were known through samizdat. They were published only abroad, in the sixty-fourth year in Frankfurt (the magazine "Frontiers", number fifty-six).

"Ivan Denisovich"

A significant and symbolic fact of Solzhenitsyn's biography is the first publication of his work in the open press. This is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The story, which appeared in Novy Mir in 1962, made a stunning impression on the reading audience. Lydia Chukovskaya, for example, wrote that the material itself, the courage of its presentation, as well as the skill of the writer are amazing.

There is another opinion - Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize in 1970 undeservedly. The main argument "for" was not the literary talent of the author, but the fact of his dissidence.

Initially, the work had a slightly different look and the name “Sch-854. One day for one convict. The editors asked for a redo. Some biographers are convinced that the reason for the appearance of the story in the press is not editorial changes, but a special order from N. S. Khrushchev as part of the exposing anti-Stalinist campaign.

Who is Russia based on?

By 1963, two more literary masterpieces of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn were created - the biography and the list of works will be replenished with "The Incident at the Kochetovka Station" and "Matryona Dvor". The last piece was handed over to Alexander Tvardovsky for editing by Novy Mir at the end of 1961. It did not pass the first discussion in the magazine, Tvardovsky did not dare to publish it. However, in his diary, he noted that he was dealing with a true writer, far from trying to impress, but striving to express his own vision.

After the impressive appearance in the press of "Ivan Denisovich" and his success, an attempt is made to discuss the story for the second time: the editors insisted on changing the year in which the plot of the story develops and its original title "There is no village without a righteous man." The new name was proposed by Tvardovsky himself. In the sixty-third year, the publication took place. Matrenin Dvor was published in the magazine along with The Incident at the Kochetovka Station under the general heading Two Stories.

The public outcry was extraordinary, just like after Ivan Denisovich. Critical disputes raged for almost a year, after which the author's works disappeared from the Soviet press for decades. The re-publication of Matryona Dvor took place only in 1989 in Ogonyok, and the author did not give consent to it. The "pirate" circulation was huge - more than three million copies.

An almost documentary story was created by Alexander Solzhenitsyn - a brief biography of the main character given in the work is genuine. Her prototype was called Matrena Zakharova. She died in 1957, and a museum was opened in her hut in 2013.

According to the vision of Andrey Sinyavsky, "Matryona Dvor" is the fundamental work of " village literature". This thing poignantly echoes, for example, with documentaries about Russia by Leonid Parfenov, or with the works of Vasil Bykov. The fundamental idea that Russia rests only on the patience and dedication of older people, mostly women, inspires palpable hopelessness. It is modern to this day.

Period of persecution

After 1964, the curve of Solzhenitsyn's biography goes down sharply. Khrushchev, who patronized the writer, was removed. Part of Solzhenitsyn's archive falls into the hands of the KGB (1965). Works that have already been published are removed from the library fund. In 1969, the Writers' Union got rid of Solzhenitsyn, excluding him from its membership. Having received the Nobel Prize in 1970, Alexander Isaevich would not dare to go to Stockholm for her. He fears that he won't be able to go back.

Open letter

In 1973, in one of the editions of the Vremya news program, an open letter was read, compiled and signed by the famous writers the thirty-first of August. The letter was published in the Pravda newspaper. It outlined the support of a group of Soviet scientists who denounced civil position A. Sakharova. For their part, the writers accused Solzhenitsyn of slandering the Soviet system and expressed their contempt for him. In total, thirty-one signatures were published under the letter, among which:

• Ch. Aitmatov
• R. Gamzatov
• V. Kataev
• S. Mikhalkov
• B. Field
• K. Simonov
• M. Sholokhov and others.

It is noteworthy that Vasil Bykov's signature was also voiced from the television screen. However, V. Bykov refutes accusations of anti-Soviet Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his biography. He wrote in "The Long Way Home" that he did not give consent to the placement of his signature under the letter, but despite this, his name was given.

A Brief History of the Archipelago

In December of the same year, Solzhenitsyn's biography will be supplemented by another event that will put his name on the list of world celebrities. The first part of the author's study "The Gulag Archipelago" is published in Paris. Only fifty thousand copies.

Six months earlier, in the summer of 1973, Solzhenitsyn gave great interview foreign media journalists. This was the start for the creation of a protest letter by a group of writers. On the day of the interview, Alexander Isaevich's assistant, Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, was arrested. Under pressure from the people who conducted the interrogation, she reported where one of the handwritten copies of the Gulag was located, after which she was released. The woman committed suicide at home.

Solzhenitsyn found out about this only in the autumn, after which he ordered the publication of the work abroad. In February 1974 Solzhenitsyn was arrested and accused of treason, exiled to the FRG. Later he will move to Switzerland (Zurich), then to the United States (Vermont). With the fees from the Gulag, Ivan Isaevich created a fund to support political prisoners and help their families in the USSR.

Return of Solzhenitsyn

In the biography, the most important thing, perhaps, is the restoration of historical justice and the return to Russia in 1994. Since 1990, the motherland will try to rehabilitate itself before Solzhenitsyn - he will be returned citizenship, the criminal prosecution will be stopped and he will be presented for the State Prize as the author of The Gulag Archipelago. In the same year, Novy Mir will publish In the First Circle, and in 1995, Tiny.

Solzhenitsyn settled in the Moscow region, from time to time he traveled to his sons in America. In 1997 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation. He is still being published: in 1998, his stories will appear in Literary Stavropol, and in 2002, a collection of works in thirty volumes will be published. The writer died in 2008, the cause of death was called heart failure.

Writer for "abroad"

Not everyone is inclined to consider Alexander Isaevich a patriot of his fatherland. Today, as in the seventies, they reproach Solzhenitsyn: his biography and work are oriented towards Western ideology. Most of the works were not published in the Soviet Union. Many accuse him, as a person who fought against the system, of the collapse of the country and that he enjoyed support:

• "Radio Liberty";
• "Voice of America";
• "Deutsche Wave";
• "BBC" (Russian department);
• "State Department" (Russian department)
• "Pentagon" (department of propaganda)

Conclusion

After one of the articles in LiveJournal about the juggling of facts in the works of Solzhenitsyn and his misanthropy, readers left a lot of different comments. One of them deserves special attention: “Too many outside opinions. Read the works - everything is there.

Indeed, Alexander Isaevich could be wrong. However, it is not easy to accuse a person who wrote, for example, "Getting Started" or any other "Baby" of dislike for the Motherland and lack of spirituality. His creations, like the ringing of bells in "Traveling along the Oka", raise us from sinking down on four legs.