Biography of Solzhenitsyn summary. Biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Abstract on the topic

Prose Solzhenitsyn "Camp".

Completed by a student of the C-13 group

Sobolev Alexey

Teacher

Gorbunova A.P.

Belgorod.

In Russian prose of the 1970s-90s, as well as "returned" literature significant place are occupied by works in which the tragedy of the people who survived mass repressions in the Stalin era is recreated. The camp theme was reflected in the prose of V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn,
Yu. Dombrovskaya, O. Volkov and other authors who experienced the hell of the Gulag. Much of what our compatriots experienced half a century ago, of course, is terrible. But it is even more terrible to forget the past, to ignore the events of those years. History repeats itself, and who knows, things could happen again in an even tougher form. AI Solzhenitsyn was the first to show the psychology of time in artistic form. He was the first to open the veil of secrecy over what many knew about, but were afraid to tell. It was he who took a step towards truthful coverage of the problems of society and the individual. Everyone who went through the repressions described by Solzhenitsyn (and not only him) deserves special attention and respect, regardless of where he spent them. The "Gulag Archipelago" is not only a monument to everyone "who did not have the life to tell about it", it is a kind of warning to the future generation.

A brief review of AI Solzhenitsyn's work.

In 1962, the Novy Mir magazine, whose chief editor was A.T. Tvardovsky, published the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which made Solzhenitsyn's name known throughout the country and far beyond its borders. The image of the protagonist was formed from the soldier Shukhov, who fought in the Soviet-German war (who never sat) and the author's personal experience. The rest of the faces are all from camp life, with their true biographies. In his story, he practically opened the camp theme for the domestic reader, continuing to expose the Stalin era. During these years, Solzhenitsyn mainly wrote stories, which critics sometimes call stories: “The Incident at the Kochetovka Station”, “For the Good of the Cause”. Then I saw the light of the story "Matryona Dvor". Postings have stopped at this point. None of the writer's works were allowed to be published in the USSR, so they were published in samizdat and abroad (the novel "In the First Circle", 1955 - 68; 1990; the story "Cancer Ward", 1966, 1990). In 1962, Solzhenitsyn was admitted to the Writers' Union and even nominated for the Lenin Prize. In the 1960s, Alexander Isaevich worked on the book "The Gulag Archipelago" (1964 - 1970), which had to be written secretly and constantly hidden from the KGB, as they vigilantly monitored the writer's activities. But letters from former prisoners and meetings with them contribute to the work on many works. The publication of the three-volume artistic and documentary study "The Gulag Archipelago" made no less impression on the Russian and world reader than "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". The book not only presents detailed history destruction of the peoples of Russia, but also affirms the Christian ideals of freedom and mercy, bestowing the experience of preserving the soul in the realm of "barbed wire". The writer's work aims to trace the correlation between the categories "truth of fact" and "artistic truth" on the material of the work of documentary prose "The Gulag Archipelago". Created over ten years, this work has become an encyclopedia of camp life. But what is the "Gulag Archipelago" - a memoir, an autobiographical novel, a kind of historical chronicle? Alexander Solzhenitsyn defined the genre of this documentary narration as "the experience of artistic research". What is depicted in his books cannot be subjected to distortion, bearing a peculiar imprint of time, power and history. In 1967 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In September 1965, the KGB seized Solzhenitsyn's archive, which blocked the possibility of publishing some books. Only the story "Zakhar Kalita" ("New World", 1966, No. 1) can be printed. And the story "Cancer Ward" begins to be published abroad. For example, one chapter (“The Right to Treat”) was given by the author for publication in Slovakia. By the spring of 1968, the entire first part, but with large errors, was printed. The current edition is the first verified by the author and the final one. The award of the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the moral strength gleaned from the tradition of great Russian literature" in 1975 provokes a new wave of persecution and slander. The writer moves to live in Zurich. After December 1975, he travels to the USA, where he speaks to trade unionists in Washington and New York.Solzhenitsyn, a deeply religious person who does not accept violence, in many of his works seeks to substantiate an alternative real historical path of world development.In 1974, he founded the Russian Public Fund, transferring all the fees for the Gulag Archipelago to it. And in 1977 he created the "All-Russian Memoir Library" and "Research of Recent Russian History". Now the epic "Red Wheel" becomes the main work for many years. Historical chapters draw specific events in detail, showing the persons involved in them. Depicting any historical character, Solzhenitsyn strives to convey with the maximum completeness his inner structure and motives for actions. Combining personal testimonies with unique archival documents, the author tries to give a detailed narrative of the revolution in Russia. Only in 1989, the editor of Novy Mir, S.P. Zalygin managed, after a long struggle, to print the chapters of The Gulag Archipelago selected by the author in Russia. Although, both abroad and at home, the personality and work of Solzhenitsyn caused a lot of both enthusiastic and sharply critical books and articles. Since 1990, Solzhenitsyn's prose has been widely published in his homeland. And on August 16 of the same year, citizenship was returned to the writer by the Decree of the President of the USSR. On September 18, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Literaturnaya Gazeta publish an article "How Should We Equip Russia?" where Solzhenitsyn warns of the difficulties in getting out of communist oppression. The writer is working on the book “A grain fell between two millstones. Essays on exile. The stories and lyrical miniatures ("Tiny"), published by Solzhenitsyn in the "New World" (1995-97), testify to the unfading power of his gift.

Russian writer, publicist, poet, public and political figure

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

short biography

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1970). A dissident who for several decades (1960-1980s) actively opposed communist ideas, the political system of the USSR and the policy of its authorities.

Beyond artistic literary works, affecting, as a rule, acute socio-political issues, became widely known for his artistic and journalistic works on the history of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries.

Childhood and youth

Alexander Isaevich (Isaakievich) Solzhenitsyn Born December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk (now the Stavropol Territory). Baptized in the Kislovodsk church of the Holy Healer Panteleimon.

Father - Isaac Semyonovich Solzhenitsyn (1891-1918), a Russian peasant from the North Caucasus (the village of Sablinskaya in "August the Fourteenth"). Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak, a Ukrainian, the daughter of the owner of the richest economy in the Kuban, a Tauride shepherd-farm laborer who rose to this level with intelligence and work. Solzhenitsyn's parents met while studying in Moscow and soon got married. Isaaki Solzhenitsyn volunteered for the front during the First World War and was an officer. He died before the birth of his son, on June 15, 1918, already after demobilization as a result of a hunting accident. Depicted under the name of Sanya (Isaac) Lazhenitsyn in the epic "Red Wheel" (based on the memoirs of the writer's wife - mother).

As a result of the revolution in 1917 and the Civil War, the family was ruined, and in 1924 Solzhenitsyn moved with his mother to Rostov-on-Don. From 1926 to 1936 he studied at school number 15 (Malevich), located in Cathedral Lane. They lived in poverty.

In the lower grades, he was ridiculed for wearing a baptismal cross and unwillingness to join the pioneers, was reprimanded for attending church. Under the influence of the school, he adopted the communist ideology, in 1936 he joined the Komsomol. In high school, he became interested in literature, began to write essays and poems; interested in history and social life. In 1937 he conceived a long novel about the 1917 revolution.

In 1936 he entered Rostov State University. Not wanting to make literature his main specialty, he chose the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. According to the recollection of a school and university friend, “... I studied mathematics not so much by vocation, but because there were exceptionally educated and very interesting teachers at the Physics and Mathematics”. One of them was D. D. Mordukhai-Boltovskoy. At the university, Solzhenitsyn studied "excellently" (Stalin scholarship), continued literary exercises, in addition to university studies, independently studied history and Marxism-Leninism. He graduated from the university in 1941 with honors, he was awarded the qualification of a second-class research worker in the field of mathematics and a teacher. The dean's office recommended him for the position of university assistant or graduate student.

From the very beginning of his literary activity, he was keenly interested in the history of the First World War and the revolution. In 1937, he began to collect materials on the "Samson catastrophe", wrote the first chapters of "August the Fourteenth" (from orthodox communist positions). He was interested in the theater, in the summer of 1938 he tried to pass the exams at the theater school of Yu. A. Zavadsky, but unsuccessfully. In 1939 he entered the correspondence department of the Faculty of Literature of the Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History in Moscow. He interrupted his studies in 1941 due to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

In August 1939 he and his friends made a kayak trip along the Volga. The life of the writer from that time until April 1945 is described by him in his autobiographical poem Dorozhenka (1947-1952).

During the war

With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Solzhenitsyn was not immediately mobilized, as he was recognized as "limited fit" for health reasons. Actively sought to be drafted to the front. In September 1941, together with his wife, he was assigned as a school teacher in Morozovsk. Rostov region, however, already on October 18, he was called up by the Morozovsky district military commissariat and assigned to the 74th transport and horse-drawn battalion.

The events of the summer of 1941 - the spring of 1942 are described by Solzhenitsyn in the unfinished story "Love the Revolution" (1948).

He sought direction to a military school, in April 1942 he was sent to an artillery school in Kostroma; in November 1942, he was released as a lieutenant, sent to Saransk to a reserve artillery reconnaissance regiment to form artillery instrumental reconnaissance battalions.

In the army since March 1943. He served as commander of the 2nd sound reconnaissance battery of the 794th separate army reconnaissance artillery battalion of the 44th cannon artillery brigade (PABR) of the 63rd Army on the Central and Bryansk fronts.

By order of the Military Council of the 63rd Army No. 5 / n dated August 10, 1943, Lieutenant Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree for identifying the main enemy artillery grouping in the Malinovets - Setukha - Bolshoy Malinovets section and identifying three disguised batteries that were subsequently destroyed 44- i PABR.

Since the spring of 1944, he was commander of the sound reconnaissance battery of the 68th Sevsko-Rechitsa cannon artillery brigade of the 48th Army of the 2nd Belorussian Front. Battle route - from Orel to East Prussia.

By order of the 68th PABR No. 19 of July 8, 1944, he was awarded the Order of the Red Star for the sound detection of two enemy batteries and the adjustment of fire on them, which led to the suppression of their fire.

At the front, despite the strictest ban, he kept a diary. He wrote a lot, sent his works to Moscow writers for review.

Arrest and imprisonment

Arrest and sentence

At the front, Solzhenitsyn continued to be interested in public life, but became critical of Stalin (for "distorting Leninism"); in letters to an old friend (Nikolai Vitkevich), he spoke abusively about the “Godfather”, under which Stalin was guessed, kept in his personal belongings a “resolution” drawn up together with Vitkevich, in which he compared the Stalinist order with serfdom and talked about the creation after the war of an “organization” for restoration of the so-called "Leninist" norms.

The letters aroused the suspicion of military censorship. On February 2, 1945, telegraph order No. 4146 of the deputy head of the Main Directorate of Counterintelligence "Smersh" of the NPO of the USSR, Lieutenant General Babich, followed by telegraph order No. 4146 on the immediate arrest of Solzhenitsyn and his delivery to Moscow. On February 3, the army counterintelligence launched an investigation file 2/2 No. 3694-45. On February 9, Solzhenitsyn was arrested at the headquarters of the unit, stripped of his military rank of captain, and then sent to Moscow, to the Lubyanka prison. Interrogations continued from February 20 to May 25, 1945 (investigator - assistant chief of the 3rd department of the XI department of the 2nd department of the NKGB of the USSR, captain of state security Ezepov). On June 6, the head of the 3rd branch of the XI department of the 2nd directorate, Colonel Itkin, his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Rublev and investigator Ezepov, drew up an indictment, which was approved on June 8 by State Security Commissar 3rd rank Fedotov. On July 7, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced in absentia by a Special Conference to 8 years in labor camps and eternal exile at the end of the term of imprisonment (under article 58, paragraph 10, part 2, and paragraph 11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR).

Conclusion

In August he was sent to the New Jerusalem camp, on September 9, 1945 he was transferred to a camp in Moscow, whose prisoners were engaged in the construction of residential buildings on the Kaluga Gate (now Gagarin Square).

In June 1946 he was transferred to the system of special prisons of the 4th special department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in September he was sent to a closed design bureau (“sharashka”) at the aircraft engine plant in Rybinsk, five months later, in February 1947, to a “sharashka” in Zagorsk, 9 July 1947 - to a similar institution in Marfin (on the northern outskirts of Moscow). There he worked as a mathematician.

In Marfin, Solzhenitsyn began work on the autobiographical poem "Dorozhenka" and the story "Love the Revolution", which was conceived as a prose continuation of "Dorozhenka". Later, the last days on the Marfinskaya sharashka are described by Solzhenitsyn in the novel "In the First Circle", where he himself is bred under the name of Gleb Nerzhin, and his cellmates Dmitry Panin and Lev Kopelev - Dmitry Sologdin and Lev Rubin.

In December 1948, his wife divorced Solzhenitsyn in absentia.

On May 19, 1950, Solzhenitsyn, due to a quarrel with the “sharashka” authorities, was transferred to the Butyrka prison, from where he was sent to Steplag in August - to a special camp in Ekibastuz. Almost a third of his term of imprisonment - from August 1950 to February 1953 - Alexander Isaevich served in the north of Kazakhstan. In the camp he was at general work, for some time he was a foreman, he participated in a strike. Later, camp life will receive a literary embodiment in the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", and the prisoners' strike - in the film script "Tanks Know the Truth".

In the winter of 1952, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with seminoma, he was operated on in camp 909.

Liberation and exile

In conclusion, Solzhenitsyn was completely disillusioned with Marxism, and over time he leaned towards Orthodox-patriotic ideas. Already in the "sharashka" he began to write again, in Ekibastuz he composed poems, poems ("Dorozhenka", "Prussian Nights") and plays in verse ("Prisoners", "Feast of the Victors") and memorized them.

After his release, Solzhenitsyn was sent into exile to a settlement “forever” (Berlik village, Kokterek district, Dzhambul region, South Kazakhstan). He worked as a teacher of mathematics and physics in the 8th-10th grades of the local secondary school named after Kirov.

By the end of 1953, his health deteriorated sharply, the examination revealed a cancerous tumor, in January 1954 he was sent to Tashkent for treatment, and in March he was discharged with significant improvement. Illness, treatment, healing and hospital experiences formed the basis of the story "Cancer Ward", which was conceived in the spring of 1955.

Rehabilitation

In June 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn was released without rehabilitation "due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions."

In August 1956 he returned from exile to Central Russia. He lived in the village of Miltsevo (post office Torfoprodukt of the Kurlovsky district (now Gus-Khrustalny district) of the Vladimir region), taught mathematics and electrical engineering (physics) in grades 8-10 of the Mezinovskaya secondary school. Then he met his ex-wife, who finally returned to him in November 1956 (the remarriage was concluded on February 2, 1957). Solzhenitsyn's life in the Vladimir region is reflected in the story "Matryonin Dvor".

On February 6, 1957, by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated.

From July 1957 he lived in Ryazan, worked as a teacher of physics and astronomy at secondary school No. 2.

First publications

In 1959, Solzhenitsyn wrote the story Shch-854 (later published in the Novy Mir magazine under the title One Day of Ivan Denisovich) about the life of a simple prisoner from Russian peasants, in 1960 - the stories “A village is not worth without a righteous man” and "Right Hand", the first "Tiny", the play "The Light that is in you" ("Candle in the wind"). He experienced a creative crisis, seeing the impossibility of publishing his works.

In 1961, impressed by the speech of Alexander Tvardovsky (editor of the Novy Mir magazine) at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, he handed over Shch-854 to him, having previously removed the most politically sharp fragments from the story, which were obviously not passed through Soviet censorship. Tvardovsky rated the story extremely highly, invited the author to Moscow and began to seek publication of the work. N. S. Khrushchev overcame the resistance of the members of the Politburo and allowed the publication of the story. The story entitled "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published in the journal "New World" (No. 11, 1962), immediately republished and translated into foreign languages. December 30, 1962 Solzhenitsyn was admitted to the Writers' Union of the USSR.

Shortly thereafter, Novy Mir magazine (No. 1, 1963) published The Village Is Not Standing Without a Righteous Man (under the title Matryonin Dvor) and The Incident at the Kochetovka Station (under the title The Incident at the Krechetovka Station).

The first publications caused a huge number of responses from writers, public figures, critics and readers. Letters from readers - former prisoners(in response to "Ivan Denisovich") laid the foundation for the "Gulag Archipelago".

Solzhenitsyn's stories stood out sharply against the background of the works of that time for their artistic merit and civic courage. This was emphasized at that time by many, including writers and poets. Thus, V. T. Shalamov wrote in a letter to Solzhenitsyn in November 1962:

The story is like poetry, everything is perfect in it, everything is expedient. Each line, each scene, each characterization is so concise, intelligent, subtle and deep that I think that Novy Mir has never printed anything so solid, so strong from the very beginning of its existence.

In the summer of 1963, he created the next, fifth in a row, truncated "under censorship" edition of the novel "In the First Circle", intended for printing (of 87 chapters - "Circle-87"). Four chapters from the novel were selected by the author and offered to the New World "...for testing, under the guise of" Fragment "...".

On December 28, 1963, the editors of the Novy Mir magazine and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art nominated One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for the Lenin Prize for 1964 (as a result of a vote by the Prize Committee, the proposal was rejected).

In 1964, for the first time, he gave his work to samizdat - a cycle of "poems in prose" under the general title "Tiny".

In the summer of 1964, the fifth edition of The First Circle was discussed and accepted for publication in 1965 by Novy Mir. Tvardovsky got acquainted with the manuscript of the novel "Cancer Ward" and even offered it to Khrushchev for reading (again - through his assistant Lebedev). Solzhenitsyn met with Shalamov, who had previously spoken favorably of Ivan Denisovich, and invited him to work together on Archipelago.

In the fall of 1964, the play "Candle in the Wind" was accepted for production at the Theater named after Lenin Komsomol in Moscow.

"Tiny" penetrated abroad through samizdat and under the title "Etudes and Tiny Stories" was published in October 1964 in Frankfurt in the journal "Frontiers" (No. 56) - this is the first publication in the foreign Russian press of Solzhenitsyn's work, rejected in the USSR.

In 1965, with B. A. Mozhaev, he traveled to the Tambov region to collect materials about the peasant uprising (on the trip the name of the epic novel about the Russian revolution was determined - “The Red Wheel”), began the first and fifth parts of the Archipelago (in Solotch, Ryazan region and on the Kopli-Märdi farm near Tartu), finished work on the stories “What a pity” and “Zakhar-Kalita”, on November 4 published in the Literary Gazette (arguing with academician V.V. Vinogradov) the article “It is not customary to whitewash cabbage soup with tar , that’s why sour cream” in defense of Russian literary speech:

It has not yet been neglected to expel what is journalistic jargon, and not Russian speech. It is not too late to correct the warehouse of our written (author's) speech, so as to return to it the colloquial folk lightness and freedom.

On September 11, the KGB searched the apartment of Solzhenitsyn's friend V. L. Teush, with whom Solzhenitsyn kept part of his archive. Manuscripts of poems, "In the First Circle", "Tiny", the plays "Republic of Labor" and "Feast of the Winners" were confiscated.

The Central Committee of the CPSU issued a closed edition and distributed among the nomenklatura, "to convict the author", "The Feast of the Winners" and the fifth edition of "In the First Circle". Solzhenitsyn wrote complaints about the illegal seizure of manuscripts to the Minister of Culture of the USSR P. N. Demichev, the secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU L. I. Brezhnev, M. A. Suslov and Yu. V. Andropov, transferred the manuscript of Krug-87 to the Central State Archive for storage literature and art.

Four stories were offered to the editors of Ogonyok, October, Literary Russia”, “Moscow” - rejected everywhere. The newspaper "Izvestia" typed the story "Zakhar-Kalita" - ready set was scattered, "Zakhar-Kalita" was transferred to the newspaper "Pravda" - followed by the refusal of N. A. Abalkin, head of the department of literature and art.

At the same time, the collection “A. Solzhenitsyn. Favorites ”:“ One day ... ”,“ Kochetovka ”and“ Matryonin Dvor ”; in Germany in the publishing house "Posev" - a collection of stories in German.

dissidence

By March 1963, Solzhenitsyn had lost Khrushchev's favor (not being awarded the Lenin Prize, refusing to publish the novel In the First Circle). After L. Brezhnev came to power, Solzhenitsyn practically lost the opportunity to legally publish and speak. In September 1965, the KGB confiscated Solzhenitsyn's archive with his most anti-Soviet works, which aggravated the situation of the writer. Taking advantage of a certain inaction of the authorities, in 1966 Solzhenitsyn began an active social activities(meetings, speeches, interviews with foreign journalists): On October 24, 1966, he read excerpts from his works at the Institute of Atomic Energy. Kurchatov (“The Cancer Ward” - the chapters “How People Live”, “Justice”, “Absurdities”; “In the First Circle” - sections on prison dates; the first act of the play “A Candle in the Wind”), November 30 - at an evening at the Institute Oriental studies in Moscow (“In the first circle” - chapters on exposing informers and the insignificance of operas; “Cancer Ward” - two chapters). Then he began to distribute his novels "In the First Circle" and "Cancer Ward" in samizdat. In February 1967, he secretly completed the work "The Gulag Archipelago" - by the author's definition, "the experience of artistic research."

In May 1967, he sent out a "Letter to the Congress" of the Writers' Union of the USSR, which became widely known among the Soviet intelligentsia and in the West.

First of all, the Prague Spring was fueled by Solzhenitsyn's well-known letter to the Fourth All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, which was also read in Czechoslovakia.

Interview of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation Vladimir Petrovich Lukin to the Itogi magazine

After the Letter, the authorities began to perceive Solzhenitsyn as a serious opponent. In 1968, when in the USA and Western Europe The novels In the First Circle and The Cancer Ward were published without the permission of the author, which brought the writer popularity, the Soviet press began a propaganda campaign against the author. On November 4, 1969, he was expelled from the Writers' Union of the USSR.

In August 1968, Solzhenitsyn met Natalia Svetlova, they began an affair. Solzhenitsyn began to seek a divorce from his first wife. With great difficulty, the divorce was obtained on July 22, 1972.

After being expelled, Solzhenitsyn began to openly declare his Orthodox-patriotic convictions and sharply criticize the authorities. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and eventually the prize was awarded to him. Only eight years passed from the first publication of Solzhenitsyn's work to the awarding of the award - this has never happened before or since in the history of the Nobel Prizes in Literature. The writer emphasized the political aspect of the award, although the Nobel Committee denied this. A powerful propaganda campaign against Solzhenitsyn was organized in Soviet newspapers, up to the publication in the Soviet press of Dean Reed's "open letter to Solzhenitsyn". The Soviet authorities offered Solzhenitsyn to leave the country, but he refused.

In the late 1960s - early 1970s, a special unit was created in the KGB, which was exclusively engaged in the operational development of Solzhenitsyn - the 9th department of the 5th directorate.

On June 11, 1971, Solzhenitsyn's novel "August 14th" was published in Paris, in which the author's Orthodox-patriotic views are clearly expressed. In August 1971, the KGB carried out an operation to physically eliminate Solzhenitsyn - during a trip to Novocherkassk, he was secretly injected with an unknown poisonous substance (presumably ricinin). The writer survived after that, but was seriously ill for a long time.

In 1972, he wrote a Lenten Letter to Patriarch Pimen about the problems of the Church, in support of the speech of Archbishop Hermogen (Golubev) of Kaluga.

In 1972-1973 he worked on the epic "Red Wheel", but did not conduct active dissident activities.

In August - September 1973, relations between the authorities and dissidents escalated, which also affected Solzhenitsyn.

On August 23, 1973, he gave a long interview to foreign correspondents. On the same day, the KGB detained one of the writer's assistants, Elizaveta Voronyanskaya. During interrogation, she was forced to reveal the location of one copy of the manuscript of The Gulag Archipelago. When she returned home, she hanged herself. On September 5, Solzhenitsyn found out about what had happened and ordered that the printing of Archipelago be started in the West (by the immigrant publishing house YMCA-Press). Then he sent the leadership of the USSR "Letter to the leaders of the Soviet Union", in which he called for abandoning the communist ideology and taking steps to turn the USSR into a Russian national state. Since the end of August, a large number of articles have been published in the Western press in defense of dissidents and, in particular, Solzhenitsyn.

A powerful propaganda campaign against dissidents was launched in the USSR. On August 31, the Pravda newspaper published an open letter from a group of Soviet writers condemning Solzhenitsyn and A. D. Sakharov, "slandering our state and social system." On September 24, the KGB, through Solzhenitsyn's ex-wife, offered the writer the official publication of the story Cancer Ward in the USSR in exchange for refusing to publish The Gulag Archipelago abroad. However, Solzhenitsyn, saying that he had no objection to the publication of Cancer Ward in the USSR, did not express a desire to bind himself by an unspoken agreement with the authorities. IN last days On December 1973, the publication of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was announced. A massive campaign to denigrate Solzhenitsyn as a traitor to the motherland with the label of "literary Vlasov" began in the Soviet mass media. The emphasis was not on the real content of The Gulag Archipelago (an artistic study of the Soviet camp-prison system of 1918-1956), which was not discussed at all, but on Solzhenitsyn’s solidarity with “traitors to the motherland during the war, policemen and Vlasovites”.

In the USSR, during the years of stagnation, August 1919 and The Gulag Archipelago (as well as the first novels) were distributed in samizdat.

At the end of 1973, Solzhenitsyn became the initiator and collector of the group of authors of the collection “From under the rocks” (published by the YMCA-Press in Paris in 1974), wrote articles for this collection “On the return of breath and consciousness”, “Repentance and self-restraint as categories national life”, “Education”.

Exile

On January 7, 1974, the release of the "Gulag Archipelago" and measures to "suppress anti-Soviet activities" by Solzhenitsyn were discussed at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. Yuri Andropov proposed to expel Solzhenitsyn from the country in an administrative manner. Ustinov, Grishin, Kirilenko, Katushev spoke in favor of the expulsion; for arrest and exile - Kosygin, Brezhnev, Podgorny, Shelepin, Gromyko and others. A resolution was adopted - “Solzhenitsyn A.I. to bring to justice. Instruct comrades Andropov Yu. V. and Rudenko R. A. to determine the order and procedure for conducting the investigation and litigation over Solzhenitsyn A. I. " However, contrary to the decision of the Politburo on January 7, Andropov's opinion about expulsion ultimately prevailed. Earlier, one of the "Soviet leaders", Interior Minister Nikolai Shchelokov, sent a note to the Politburo in defense of Solzhenitsyn, but his proposals (including publishing Cancer Ward) did not find support.

On February 12, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, accused of treason and deprived of Soviet citizenship. On February 13, he was expelled from the USSR (delivered to Germany by plane).

On February 14, 1974, an order was issued by the head of the Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press under the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On the Withdrawal of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s Works from Libraries and Booksellers”. In accordance with this order, the issues of the Novy Mir magazines were destroyed: No. 11 for 1962 (the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in it), No. 1 for 1963 (with the stories “Matryonin Dvor” and “The Incident at the Station Krechetovka"), No. 7 for 1963 (with the story "For the good of the cause") and No. 1 for 1966 (with the story "Zakhar-Kalita"); "Roman-gazeta" No. 1 for 1963 and separate editions of "Ivan Denisovich" (publishing houses "Soviet Writer" and Uchpedgiz - a publication for the blind, as well as publications in Lithuanian and Estonian). Foreign publications (including magazines and newspapers) with the works of Solzhenitsyn were also subject to confiscation. The publications were destroyed by "cutting into small pieces", which was documented by an appropriate act signed by the head of the library and its employees who destroyed the magazines.

TASS message
on the expulsion of A. Solzhenitsyn
(News. 15.2.1974)

On March 29, the Solzhenitsyn family left the USSR. The archive and military awards of the writer were secretly taken abroad by the assistant to the US military attache, William Odom. Shortly after his expulsion, Solzhenitsyn made a short trip to Northern Europe, as a result of which he decided to temporarily settle in Zurich, Switzerland.

On March 3, 1974, a "Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union" was published in Paris; leading Western publications and many democratically minded dissidents in the USSR, including Andrei Sakharov and Roy Medvedev, rated the Letter as anti-democratic, nationalistic, and containing "dangerous delusions"; Solzhenitsyn's relationship with the Western press continued to deteriorate.

In the summer of 1974, with fees from the Gulag Archipelago, he created the Russian Public Fund for Assistance to the Persecuted and Their Families to help political prisoners in the USSR (parcels and money transfers to places of detention, legal and illegal material assistance to the families of prisoners).

In 1974-1975, in Zurich, he collected materials about Lenin's life in exile (for the epic "Red Wheel"), completed and published his memoirs "A Calf Butted an Oak".

In April 1975, he traveled with his family through Western Europe, then went to Canada and the United States. In June - July 1975, Solzhenitsyn visited Washington and New York, delivered speeches at the congress of trade unions and in the US Congress. In his speeches, Solzhenitsyn sharply criticized the communist regime and ideology, called on the United States to abandon cooperation with the USSR and the policy of detente; at that time, the writer still continued to perceive the West as an ally in the liberation of Russia from "communist totalitarianism." At the same time, Solzhenitsyn feared that in the event of a rapid transition to democracy in the USSR, interethnic conflicts could escalate.

In August 1975 he returned to Zurich and continued to work on the Red Wheel epic.

In February 1976, he made a trip to Great Britain and France, by which time anti-Western motives became noticeable in his speeches. In March 1976, the writer visited Spain. In a sensational speech on Spanish television, he spoke approvingly of the recent Franco regime and warned Spain against "moving too fast towards democracy." Criticism of Solzhenitsyn intensified in the Western press, and some leading European and American politicians declared their disagreement with his views.

Soon after his appearance in the West, he became close to the old emigre organizations and the YMCA-Press publishing house, in which he occupied a dominant position, without becoming its formal leader. He was cautiously criticized in the emigrant environment for the decision to remove the emigrant public figure Morozov, who led the publishing house for about 30 years, from the leadership of the publishing house.

Solzhenitsyn’s ideological differences with the emigration of the “third wave” (that is, those who left the USSR in the 1970s) and Western activists of the Cold War are covered in his memoirs “A grain fell between two millstones”, as well as in numerous emigrant publications.

In April 1976, he moved to the United States with his family and settled in the town of Cavendish (Vermont). After his arrival, the writer returned to work on The Red Wheel, for which he spent two months in the Russian émigré archive at the Hoover Institution.

He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a "Vermont recluse."

Back in Russia

With the advent of perestroika, the official attitude in the USSR towards the work and activities of Solzhenitsyn began to change. Many of his works were published, in particular, in the journal Novy Mir in 1989, separate chapters of The Gulag Archipelago were published.

September 18, 1990 at the same time in the "Literary Gazette" and " Komsomolskaya Pravda”an article by Solzhenitsyn was published on the ways of reviving the country, on the reasonable, in his opinion, foundations for building the life of the people and the state - “How do we equip Russia”. The article developed the old thoughts of Solzhenitsyn, expressed by him earlier in the “Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union” and journalistic works, in particular, included in the collection “From under the rocks”. The author's fee for this article Solzhenitsyn transferred in favor of the victims of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The article generated a huge response.

In 1990, Solzhenitsyn was restored to Soviet citizenship with the subsequent termination of the criminal case, in December of the same year he was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR for the Gulag Archipelago.

According to the story of V. Kostikov, during the first official visit of B. N. Yeltsin to the United States in 1992, immediately upon arrival in Washington, Boris Nikolayevich called Solzhenitsyn from the hotel and had a “long” conversation with him, in particular, about the Kuril Islands. “The opinion of the writer turned out to be unexpected and shocking for many: “I have studied the entire history of the islands since the 12th century. These are not our islands, Boris Nikolaevich. Need to give. But it's expensive...'

On April 27-30, 1992, film director Stanislav Govorukhin visited Solzhenitsyn at his home in Vermont and made a two-part television film Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Together with his family, Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland on May 27, 1994, having flown from the USA to Magadan. After that, from Vladivostok, I traveled by train across the country and ended the journey in the capital. Spoke in the State Duma. At the Yaroslavl railway station in Moscow, the communists greeted Solzhenitsyn with protest posters: "Solzhenitsyn is America's accomplice in the collapse of the USSR" and "Solzhenitsyn, get out of Russia." Democrats were against Solzhenitsyn - the faction "Democratic Choice of Russia" voted against the writer's speech in the building of the State Duma.

In March 1993, by personal order of President B. Yeltsin, he was presented (on the basis of a lifetime inheritable possession) with the Sosnovka-2 state dacha in Troitse-Lykovo (plot area 4.35 hectares). The Solzhenitsyns designed and built a two-story brick house there with a large hall, a glazed gallery, a living room with a fireplace, a concert piano and a library where portraits of P. Stolypin and A. Kolchak hang. Solzhenitsyn's Moscow apartment was located in Kozitsky Lane.

In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, but he refused the award: “I cannot accept the award from the supreme power that has brought Russia to its current disastrous state.” In the same year, he published a voluminous historical and journalistic essay "Russia in a collapse", containing reflections on the changes that took place in Russia in the 1990s, and on the state of the country, in which he sharply condemned the reforms (in particular, privatization) carried out by the Yeltsin government. - Gaidar - Chubais, and the actions of the Russian authorities in Chechnya.

He was awarded the Big Gold Medal named after M.V. Lomonosov (1998).

In April 2006, answering questions from the Moscow News newspaper, Solzhenitsyn stated:

“NATO is methodically and persistently developing its military apparatus - to the East of Europe and to the continental coverage of Russia from the South. Here both the open material and ideological support of the “color” revolutions, and the paradoxical introduction of North Atlantic interests in Central Asia. All this leaves no doubt that a complete encirclement of Russia is being prepared, and then the loss of its sovereignty.

Awarded with the State Prize of the Russian Federation for outstanding achievements in the field of humanitarian activity (2007).

On June 12, 2007, President Vladimir Putin visited Solzhenitsyn and congratulated him on being awarded the State Prize.

Shortly after the author's return to the country, a literary prize named after him was established to reward writers "whose work has high artistic merit, contributes to self-knowledge of Russia, and makes a significant contribution to the preservation and careful development of the traditions of Russian literature."

He spent the last years of his life in Moscow and at a dacha outside Moscow. At the end of 2002, he suffered a severe hypertensive crisis, the last years of his life he was seriously ill, but continued to write. Together with his wife Natalia Dmitrievna, president of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Foundation, he worked on the preparation and publication of his most complete, 30-volume collected works. After the severe operation he underwent, only his right hand worked.

Death and burial

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008 at the age of 90 in his home in Troitse-Lykovo. Death occurred at 23:45 Moscow time from acute heart failure.

On August 5, in the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences, of which Solzhenitsyn was a full member, a civil memorial service and farewell to the deceased took place. This mourning ceremony was attended by former President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Osipov, Rector of Moscow State University Viktor Sadovnichy, former Prime Minister of Russia Yevgeny Primakov, figures of Russian culture and several thousand citizens.

On August 6, 2008, Archbishop Alexy (Frolov) of Orekhovo-Zuevsky performed a funeral liturgy and funeral service in the Great Cathedral of the Moscow Donskoy Monastery. On the same day, the ashes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn were interred with military honors (as a war veteran) in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery behind the altar of the church of St. John of the Ladder, next to the grave of Vasily Klyuchevsky. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev returned to Moscow from a short vacation to attend the funeral service.

On August 3, 2010, on the second anniversary of his death, a monument was erected on Solzhenitsyn's grave - a marble cross designed by sculptor Dmitry Shakhovsky.

Family Children

• Wives:
  • Natalya Alekseevna Reshetovskaya (1919-2003; married to Solzhenitsyn from April 27, 1940 to (formally) 1972), author of five memoirs about her husband, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Reading Russia (1990), Rupture (1992) and others.
  • Natalia Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyna (Svetlova) (b. 1939) (since April 20, 1973).

Accusations of informing the NKVD

Beginning in 1976, the West German writer and criminologist Frank Arnau accused Solzhenitsyn of camp "snitching", referring to a copy of the autograph of the so-called "denunciation of Vetrov" dated January 20, 1952. The reason for the accusations was the description by Solzhenitsyn himself in chapter 12 of the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago of the process of recruiting him by the NKVD officers as informers (under the pseudonym "Vetrov"). Solzhenitsyn also emphasized that, being formally recruited, he did not write a single denunciation. It is noteworthy that even the Czechoslovakian journalist Tomasz Rzezach, who wrote the book “Solzhenitsyn's Spiral of Treason” by order of the 5th KGB Directorate, did not consider it possible to use this “document” obtained by Arnau. Solzhenitsyn provided the Western press with samples of his handwriting for a handwriting examination, but Arnau declined to conduct an examination. In turn, Arnau and Rzezach were accused of contacts with the Stasi and the KGB, whose Fifth Directorate, as part of Operation Spider, tried to discredit Solzhenitsyn.

In 1998, journalist O. Davydov put forward a version of “self-delusion”, in which Solzhenitsyn, besides himself, accused four people, one of whom, N. Vitkevich, was sentenced to ten years. Solzhenitsyn denied these accusations.

Creation

Solzhenitsyn's work is distinguished by the setting of large-scale epic tasks, the demonstration of historical events through the eyes of several characters of different social levels, located on opposite sides of the barricades. His style is characterized by biblical allusions, associations with classic epic(Dante, Goethe), the symbolism of the composition, the author's position is not always expressed (a clash of different points of view is presented). A distinctive feature of his works is documentary; most of the characters have real prototypes personally known to the writer. "Life for him is more symbolic and meaningful than literary fiction." The novel The Red Wheel is characterized by the active involvement of a purely documentary genre (reportage, transcripts), the use of modernist poetics (Solzhenitsyn himself recognized the influence of Dos Passos on him); in general artistic philosophy, the influence of Leo Tolstoy is noticeable.

For Solzhenitsyn, as in fiction, and in essayism, attention to the riches of the Russian language is characteristic, the use of rare words from the Dahl dictionary (which he began to analyze in his youth), Russian writers and everyday experience, replacing them with foreign words; this work was crowned with the separately published "Russian Dictionary of Language Expansion"

Positive ratings

K. I. Chukovsky called Ivan Denisovich a “literary miracle” in an internal review: “With this story, a very strong, original and mature writer entered literature”; "a marvelous depiction of camp life under Stalin".

A. A. Akhmatova highly appreciated Matryonin Dvor, noting the symbolism of the work (“This is more terrible than Ivan Denisovich ... There you can push everything onto a cult of personality, but here ... After all, it’s not Matryona, but the whole Russian village fell under a steam locomotive and to smithereens…”), figurativeness of individual details.

Andrei Tarkovsky in 1970 noted in his diary: “He good writer. And above all, a citizen. Somewhat embittered, which is quite understandable if you judge him as a person, and which is more difficult to understand, considering him primarily a writer. But his personality is heroic. Noble and stoic."

The chairman of the Committee for Freedom of Conscience, the priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church, G.P. Yakunin, believed that Solzhenitsyn was "a great writer - of a high level not only from an artistic point of view," and also managed to dispel faith in the communist utopia in the West with the "Gulag Archipelago".

Solzhenitsyn's biographer L. I. Saraskina owns such a general description of her hero: “He emphasized many times:“ I am not a dissident. He is a writer - and he never felt like anyone else ... he would not lead any party, he would not accept any post, although he was expected and called. But Solzhenitsyn, oddly enough, is strong when he is a warrior alone in the field. He proved it many times."

Literary critic L. A. Anninsky believed that Solzhenitsyn played historical role as a “prophet”, “political practitioner”, who destroyed the system, who in the eyes of society was responsible for the negative consequences of his activities, from which he himself was “horrified”.

V. G. Rasputin believed that Solzhenitsyn was "both in literature and in public life ... one of the most powerful figures in the entire history of Russia", "a great moralist, just, talent."

V.V. Putin said that during all his meetings with Solzhenitsyn, he “was struck every time by how organic and convinced a statesman Solzhenitsyn was. He could oppose the existing regime, disagree with the authorities, but the state was a constant for him.”

Criticism

Criticism of Solzhenitsyn since 1962, when One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published, paints a rather complicated picture; often former allies after 10-20 years fell upon him with harsh accusations. Two unequal parts can be distinguished - a voluminous criticism of literary creativity and socio-political views (representatives of almost the entire social spectrum, in Russia and abroad) and sporadic discussions of individual "controversial" moments of his biography.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a campaign against Solzhenitsyn was carried out in the USSR, with all sorts of accusations against Solzhenitsyn - a "slanderer" and a "literary Vlasovite" - in particular, Mikhail Sholokhov, Dean Reed, Stepan Shchipachev (the author of an article in Literaturnaya newspaper, entitled "The End of the Literary Vlasovite").

Participants of the Great Patriotic War, who had the opportunity to get acquainted with the book "The Gulag Archipelago", did not agree with the description of military events in it.

In the USSR, in dissident circles in the 1960s and early 1970s, criticism of Solzhenitsyn was equated, if not with cooperation with the KGB, then with a betrayal of the ideas of freedom. Vladimir Maksimov recalled:

I belonged to the environment that surrounded him and Andrei Sakharov (...) His position at that time seemed to all of us absolutely correct and the only possible one. Any criticism of him, official or private, was perceived by us as a spit in the face or a stab in the back.

Subsequently (Solzhenitsyn himself dated his loss of "unified support of society" to the period between the release of "August the Fourteenth" in June 1971 and the distribution of the "Lenten Letter to Patriarch Pimen" in Samizdat in the spring of 1972), criticism of him also began to come from Soviet dissidents ( both liberal and extremely conservative).

In 1974, Andrei Sakharov was critical of Solzhenitsyn's views, disagreeing with the proposed authoritarian option for the transition from communism (as opposed to the democratic path of development), "religious-patriarchal romanticism" and the overestimation of the ideological factor in the then conditions. Sakharov compared Solzhenitsyn's ideals with official Soviet ideology, including Stalin's, and warned of the dangers associated with them. Grigory Pomerants, recognizing that in Russia for many the path to Christianity began with reading Matryonin Dvor, on the whole did not share Solzhenitsyn's views on communism as an absolute evil and pointed to the Russian roots of Bolshevism, and also pointed out the dangers of anti-communism as "the suffocation of the struggle ". Solzhenitsyn's friend in exile, Lev Kopelev publicly criticized Solzhenitsyn's views several times, and in 1985 summarized his claims in a letter where he accused Solzhenitsyn of a spiritual split in emigration and intolerance to dissent. The sharp correspondence debate between Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sinyavsky, who repeatedly attacked him in the émigré magazine Syntax, is well known.

Roy Medvedev criticized Solzhenitsyn, pointing out that “his young, orthodox Marxism did not stand the test of the camp, making him an anti-communist. It is impossible to justify oneself and one's instability by slandering the "communists in the camps", portraying them as hard-nosed orthodox or traitors, while distorting the truth. It is unworthy of a Christian, which Solzhenitsyn considers himself to be, to gloat and mock at those who were shot in 1937-1938. Bolsheviks, considering it as retribution for the "Red Terror". And it is absolutely unacceptable to interleave the book with “an element of tendentious untruth, insignificant in number, but impressive in composition.” Medvedev also criticized the Letter to the Leaders, calling it a "disappointing document", "an unrealistic and incompetent utopia", pointing out that "Solzhenitsyn is completely ignorant of Marxism, attributing various nonsense to the doctrine", and that "with the technical superiority of the USSR, the predicted war on the part of China would be suicide."

Varlam Shalamov initially treated Solzhenitsyn's creative work with attention and interest, but already in a letter about One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, along with praise, he made a number of critical remarks. Later, he became completely disillusioned with Solzhenitsyn and wrote already in 1971:

Solzhenitsyn's activity is the activity of a businessman, aimed narrowly at personal success with all the provocative accessories of such activity.

Richard Pipes wrote about his political and historiosophical views, criticizing Solzhenitsyn for idealizing tsarist Russia and holding the West responsible for communism.

Critics point to the contradictions between Solzhenitsyn's estimates of the number of repressed and archival data that became available during the period of perestroika (for example, estimates of the number of deportees during collectivization - more than 15 million), criticize Solzhenitsyn for justifying the cooperation of Soviet prisoners of war with the Germans during the Great Patriotic War .

Solzhenitsyn's study of the history of the relationship between the Jewish and Russian peoples in the book "Two Hundred Years Together" provoked criticism from a number of publicists, historians and writers.

In 2010, Alexander Dyukov accused Solzhenitsyn of using Wehrmacht propaganda materials as sources of information.

According to Zinoviy Zinik, "<находясь на Западе>, Solzhenitsyn never understood that political ideas have no spiritual value outside of their practical application. In practice, his views on patriotism, morality and religion attracted the most reactionary part of Russian society.

The image of Solzhenitsyn is subjected to a satirical image in the novel by Vladimir Voinovich "Moscow 2042" and in the poem by Yuri Kuznetsov "The Way of Christ". Voinovich, in addition, wrote a publicistic book "Portrait against the background of a myth", in which he critically assessed the work of Solzhenitsyn and his role in the spiritual history of the country.

John-Paul Khimka believes that Solzhenitsyn's views on the origin and identity of the Ukrainian people, expressed in the book How We Settle Russia, are identical to Russian nationalist views. turn XIX-XX centuries.

Awards and prizes

• August 15, 1943 - Order of the Patriotic War II degree
• July 12, 1944 - Order of the Red Star
• 1957 - medal "For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"
• 1958 - medal "For the capture of Koenigsberg"
• 1969, winter - awarded the French Journalists' Prize for the best foreign book.
• 1970 - Nobel Prize in Literature "for the moral force with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature" (offered by François Mauriac). He received a diploma and the monetary part of the award on December 10, 1974, after being expelled from the USSR.
• May 31, 1974 - presentation of the "Golden Cliche" award of the Union of Italian Journalists.
• December 1975 - The French magazine "Poin" declared Solzhenitsyn "man of the year."
• 1983 Templeton Prize for excellence in research or discovery in the spiritual life
• September 20, 1990 - awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the city of Ryazan.
• December 1990 - State Prize of the RSFSR in the field of literature - for "The Gulag Archipelago"
• In the spring of 1995, awarded Literary Prize named after the Italian satirist Vitaliano Brancati
• 1998 - Big Gold Medal named after M.V. Lomonosov - "for an outstanding contribution to the development of Russian literature, the Russian language and Russian history" (awarded on June 2, 1999)
• 1998 - Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called - for outstanding services to the Fatherland and a great contribution to world literature Refused the award ("... from the supreme power, which has brought Russia to its current disastrous state, I cannot accept the award»).
• 1998 - on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church, the writer was awarded the Order of the Holy Blessed Prince Daniel of Moscow
• December 13, 2000 - awarded the Grand Prize of the French Academy of Moral and political science(Institute de France)
• 2003 - Honorary Doctor of Moscow state university named after M.V. Lomonosov
• 2004 - Order of St. Sava Serbian 1st degree ( highest award Serbian Orthodox Church); awarded November 16, 2004
• 2004 - winner of the national award "Russian of the Year" in the nomination "Spiritual Leader"
• 2006 - State Prize of the Russian Federation - "for outstanding achievements in the field of humanitarian activity."
• 2007 - Prize of the Zivko and Milica Topalovic Foundation (Serbia) (presented on March 7, 2008): "to a great writer and humanist, whose Christian truthfulness gives us courage and consolation."
• 2008 - Botev Prize (Bulgaria) "for creativity and civil position in the defense of the moral and ethical principles of civilization"
• 2008 - Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania (posthumously)

Addresses

• In the 1970s, he lived in Moscow in apartment 169 at number 12 on Gorky Street.

perpetuation of memory

On September 20, 1990, the Ryazan City Council awarded A. Solzhenitsyn the title of honorary citizen of the city of Ryazan. Memorial plaques commemorating the work of the writer in the city are installed on the building of the city school No. 2 and residential building No. 17 on Uritsky Street.

In June 2003, a museum dedicated to the writer was opened in the main building of the Ryazan College of Electronics.

On the day of the funeral, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree "On perpetuating the memory of A.I. Solzhenitsyn", according to which, since 2009, personal scholarships named after Solzhenitsyn for students of Russian universities were established, the Moscow government was recommended to assign the name of Solzhenitsyn to one of the streets of the city, and the government of the Stavropol Territory and the administration of the Rostov region - to carry out measures to perpetuate the memory of Solzhenitsyn in Kislovodsk and Rostov-on-Don.

On December 11, 2008, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Kislovodsk on the building of the central city library, which was named after Solzhenitsyn.

On September 9, 2009, by order of the Minister of Education and Science of Russia, the mandatory minimum content of the main educational programs on Russian literature of the 20th century was supplemented by the study of fragments of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's artistic research "The Gulag Archipelago". The “school” version, abbreviated four times, with the full preservation of the structure of the work, was prepared for publication by the writer's widow. Earlier, the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and the story "Matryonin's Yard" were already included in the school curriculum. The writer's biography is studied in history lessons.

On August 3, 2010, on the second anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's death, the abbot of the Donskoy Monastery, Bishop Kirill of Pavlovsk-Posad, together with the brethren of the monastery, performed a memorial service at the grave of the writer. Before the memorial service, Kirill consecrated a new stone cross erected on Solzhenitsyn's grave, designed by the sculptor Dmitry Shakhovsky.

Since 2009, the scientific and cultural center of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Abroad in Moscow (from 1995 to 2009 - the Russian Abroad Library-Foundation) has been named after him - a museum-type scientific and cultural center for the preservation, study and popularization of history and modern life Russian abroad.

On January 23, 2013, at a meeting of the Ministry of Culture, it was decided to create a second museum in Ryazan dedicated to Solzhenitsyn.

On March 5, 2013, the authorities of the American city of Cavendish (Vermont) decided to create the Solzhenitsyn Museum.

In 2013, the name of Solzhenitsyn was given to Mezinovskaya high school(Gus-Khrustalny district of the Vladimir region), where he taught in 1956-1957. On October 26, a bust of the writer was unveiled near the school.

On September 26, a monument to Solzhenitsyn (sculptor Anatoly Shishkov) was unveiled on the alley of Nobel laureates in front of the building of Belgorod University. It is the first monument to Solzhenitsyn in Russia.

On December 12, 2013, Aeroflot put into operation a Boeing 737-800 NG named A. Solzhenitsyn.

In February 2015, a memorial room for Alexander Solzhenitsyn was opened at the Solotchi Hotel (Ryazan Region). In Solotch at various times Solzhenitsyn wrote In the First Circle, Cancer Ward, and several chapters of The Gulag Archipelago.

On December 12, 2014, the grand opening of the restored building of the Gorina estate took place in Kislovodsk, where Solzhenitsyn lived with his mother's sister from 1920 to 1924. On May 31, 2015, in the house of the aunt, where Solzhenitsyn spent his early years, the first museum of the writer in Russia and the world was opened, created in the format of an information and cultural center, where they plan to hold lectures, video screenings, seminars, round tables. The museum has a collection of books, manuscripts and photographs.

On September 5, 2015, a monument was unveiled on the Ship Embankment in Vladivostok (sculptor Pyotr Chegodaev, architect Anatoly Melnik).

An ice-class tug for mooring ships in the Magadan Commercial Sea Port is named after the writer.

In 2016, a children's library was opened in Rostov-on-Don, which was named after Solzhenitsyn.

On December 11, 2017, on the day of the writer's 99th birthday, at house 12 (building 8) on Tverskaya Street, where Solzhenitsyn lived and worked in Moscow in 1970-1974 and 1994-2002, a memorial plaque by sculptor Andrei Kovalchuk was installed.

Toponyms

On August 12, 2008, the Government of Moscow adopted a resolution "On perpetuating the memory of A. I. Solzhenitsyn in Moscow", which renamed Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street into Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street and approved the text of the commemorative plaque. Some residents of the street protested in connection with its renaming.

In October 2008, the mayor of Rostov-on-Don signed a decree naming the central avenue of the Liventsovsky microdistrict under construction after Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Since 2009, an alley in the Roman park Villa Ada has been named after the writer.

In 2010, the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn was given to the central square of the city of Crai ( fr:Crest (Drôme)) in southeastern France.

In 2012, the city authorities of Paris decided to give the name of the writer to the garden on Porte Maillot Square (fr. Porte Maillot).

Since 2013, streets in Voronezh and Khabarovsk have been named after Solzhenitsyn.

In September 2016, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation applied to UNESCO with a request to declare 2018 the "Year of Solzhenitsyn", at the 39th session of UNESCO, a decision was made on this.

On stage and screen

Solzhenitsyn's works in the drama theater

• Republic of Labor. Moscow Art Theater named after Chekhov. Moscow (1991; updated version - 1993)
• "The Feast of the Winners". State Academic Maly Theater of Russia. Moscow. Premiere of the play - January 1995

Drama theater adaptations of Solzhenitsyn's works

• "One day of Ivan Denisovich". Chita Drama Theater (1989)
• "One day of Ivan Denisovich". Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater named after Shevchenko. Directed by Andrey Zholdak. 2003
• "Matryonin's Yard". Russian spiritual theater"Voice". Director (stage version and production) Vladimir Ivanov. Starring Elena Mikhailova ( Matryona), Alexander Mikhailov ( Ignatich). May 11 and 24, June 20, 2007
• "Matryonin's Yard". State Academic Theater named after E. Vakhtangov. Directed by Vladimir Ivanov. Starring Elena Mikhailova ( Matryona), Alexander Mikhailov ( Ignatich). Premiere April 13, 2008.
• "Matryonin's Yard". Yekaterinburg Orthodox Theater "Laboratory of Dramatic Art named after M. A. Chekhov" - performance in January 2010. Directed by Natalya Milchenko Matryona- Svetlana Abasheva.
• The Gulag Archipelago. Moscow Youth Theater under the direction of Vyacheslav Spesivtsev. Moscow (1990).
• "Word of Truth" Dramatization based on the works of Solzhenitsyn. Theater-studio "Credo". Pyatigorsk (1990)
• "Sharashka" (staged chapters of the novel "In the First Circle"; premiered on December 11, 1998). Performance of the Moscow Theater on Taganka. Director (composition and staging) Yuri Lyubimov, artist David Borovsky, composer Vladimir Martynov. Starring Dmitry Mulyar ( Nerzhin), Timur Badalbeyli ( Ruby), Alexey Grabbe ( Sologdin), Valery Zolotukhin ( Uncle Avenir, Pryanchikov, Spiridon Egorov), Dmitry Vysotsky and Vladislav Malenko ( Volodin), Erwin Haas ( Gerasimovich), Yuri Lyubimov ( Stalin). The performance was staged for the 80th anniversary of Solzhenitsyn
• "Cancer Corps". Hans Otto Theatre, Potsdam, Germany. 2012. Stage version by John von Düffel. Directed by Tobias Wellemeyer. Wolfgang Vogler as Kostoglotov and Jon-Kaare Koppe as Rusanov.
• "Cancer Corps. Exiled forever." Vladimir Academic Regional Drama Theatre. Premiere September 29, 2017. Dramatization and staging - Vladimir Kuznetsov. Viktor Motyzlevsky as Kostoglotov.

Solzhenitsyn's works in musical theater

• "In the first circle." Opera. Libretto and music by Gilbert Ami. National Opera Lyon (1999).
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an opera in two acts by Alexander Tchaikovsky. The world premiere took place on May 16, 2009 in Perm on the stage of the Academic Opera and Ballet Theater named after Tchaikovsky (stage conductor Valery Platonov, stage director Georgy Isahakyan, production designer Ernst Heydebrecht (Germany), choirmasters Vladimir Nikitenkov, Dmitry Batin, Tatiana Stepanova.

Works by Solzhenitsyn in concert programs

• Reading fragments of the novel "In the First Circle" by artist N. Pavlov at the evening of the Maly Theater (Moscow) "Returned Pages".
• "One day of Ivan Denisovich". Solo performance by Alexander Filippenko. Moscow theater "Practice" (2006). Public reading of the story within joint project"One book - two cities" of the All-Russian Library for Foreign Literature (Moscow) and the public (public) library of Chicago; and on the Day of Political Prisoners (2008).
• "The case at the station Kochetovka". Solo performance by Alexander Filippenko. The television adaptation was made by Clio Film Studio CJSC (Russia) (directed by Stepan Grigorenko) commissioned by the Kultura TV channel (2001). The first broadcast on television on the TV channel "Culture" on August 4, 2008.
• "Solzhenitsyn and Shostakovich" (2010). Alexander Filippenko reads "Tiny" Solzhenitsyn (including on the radio), the music of Dmitry Shostakovich is performed by the ensemble of soloists "Hermitage".
• “After reading the opuses of Solzhenitsyn. Five views on the Gulag country” (“Zone”, “Walking Stage”, “Thieves”, “Lesopoval”, “Godfather and Six”). Performance of the five-part suite by the Ukrainian composer Viktor Vlasov by the Bayan City Ensemble on stage concert hall named after Prokofiev (Chelyabinsk) (recital - October 2010).
• "Reflection in the Water" Program for a dramatic actor, soloist and chamber orchestra, including Solzhenitsyn's "Tiny" performed by Filippenko and Shostakovich's "Preludes" performed by the State Academic Chamber Orchestra of Russia conducted by Alexei Utkin. Premiere - December 10, 2013 at Great Hall Moscow Conservatory.

Solzhenitsyn's works in film and television

• Teleplay based on the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", English television company NBC (November 8, 1963).
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Feature Film. Directed by K. Wrede. Screenplay by R. Harwood and A. Solzhenitsyn. Norsk Film (Norway), Leontis Film (Great Britain), Group-B Production (USA) (1970).
• An incident at the Krechetovka station. Short film by Gleb Panfilov (1964).
• "Ett möte på Kretjetovka Stationen". Screenplay Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Sweden (TV 1970).
• "Thirteenth Corps" ("Krebsstation"). Dir. Heinz Schirk, screenplay by Karl Wittlinger. FRG (TV 1970).
• Candle in the wind. Television film (screen version of the play "Candle in the Wind"). Directed by Michel Wien; screenplay Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alfreda Aucouturier. Production on ORTF French TV (1973).
• In 1973, a one and a half hour picture based on the novel "In the First Circle" was shot by the Polish director Alexander Ford; script: A. Ford and A. Solzhenitsyn. Denmark-Sweden.
• In the early 1990s, the two-part French film The Fist Circleru was released. TV movie. Directed by Sh. Larry. Screenplay by Ch. Cohen and A. Solzhenitsyn. CBC. USA-Canada, jointly with France (1991). The film was shown in Russia in 1994.
• "In the first circle." Solzhenitsyn co-wrote the script and reads voice-over from the author. Directed by G. Panfilov. TV channel "Russia", film company "Vera" (2006).
• Almost simultaneously with the series, the filming of a feature film based on the novel (the plot basis of A. Solzhenitsyn) took place, the script for the film version was written by Gleb Panfilov. The premiere of the film "Keep Forever" took place on December 12, 2008 in cinemas in Moscow and London (with subtitles).

Born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, in a Cossack family. Father, Isaakiy Semenovich, died on a hunt six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from a family of a wealthy landowner. In 1925 (some sources indicate 1924), the family moved to Rostov-on-Don. In 1939, Solzhenitsyn entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (some sources indicate literary courses at Moscow State University). In 1941 Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University (entered in 1936).

In October 1941 he was drafted into the army, and in 1942, after studying at the artillery school in Kostroma, he was sent to the front as the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd class and the Order of the Red Star. On February 9, 1945, for criticizing the actions of I.V. Stalin in personal letters to his childhood friend Nikolai Vitkevich, Captain Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and on July 27 was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. He stayed in the camps from 1945 to 1953 in New Jerusalem near Moscow; in the so-called sharashka - a secret research institute in the village of Marfino near Moscow; in 1950-1953 he was imprisoned in one of the Kazakh camps. In February 1953 he was released without the right to reside in the European part of the USSR and sent to an eternal settlement (1953-1956); lived in the village of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region (Kazakhstan).

On February 3, 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated and moved to Ryazan. Worked as a mathematics teacher. In 1962, in the journal Novy Mir, by special permission of N.S. Russian writer, public figure. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11 Khrushchev published the first story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn - One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (altered at the request of the editors the story Shch-854. One day of one convict). The story was nominated for the Lenin Prize, which caused active resistance from the communist authorities. In September 1965, Solzhenitsyn's archive fell into the State Security Committee (KGB) and, by order of the authorities, further publication of his works in the USSR was stopped; the already published works were removed from libraries, and new books began to be published through samizdat channels and abroad. In November 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not let him back to the USSR. In 1974, after the book The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris (in the USSR, one of the manuscripts was confiscated by the KGB in September 1973, and in December 1973 it was published in Paris), the dissident writer was arrested.

On February 12, 1974, a trial took place Alexander Solzhenitsyn was found guilty of high treason, deprived of his citizenship and sentenced to deportation from the USSR the next day. Since 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in Germany, in Switzerland (Zurich), since 1976 - in the USA (near the city of Cavendish, Vermont). Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a Vermont recluse. He criticized both the Soviet order and American reality. For 20 years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, he published a large number of works. In the USSR, Solzhenitsyn's works began to be published only from the end of the 1980s. In 1989, in the journal Novy Mir, the first official publication of excerpts from the novel The Gulag Archipelago took place. On August 16, 1990, by decree of the President of the USSR Soviet citizenship Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was restored. In 1990 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the State Prize for his book The Gulag Archipelago. May 27, 1994 the writer returned to Russia. In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation. He died on August 3, 2008 at his dacha in Troitse-Lykovo.

The work of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, whose biography will be presented to your attention in the article, can be treated in completely different ways, but it is worth unequivocally recognizing his significant contribution to Russian literature. In addition, Solzhenitsyn was also a fairly popular public figure. For his handwritten work The Gulag Archipelago, the writer became a Nobel laureate, which is a direct confirmation of how fundamental his work has become. Briefly, the most important thing from the biography of Solzhenitsyn, read on.

Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk in a relatively poor family. This significant event took place on December 11, 1918. His father was a peasant, and his mother was a Cossack. Due to the extremely difficult financial situation, the future writer, together with his parents, was forced to move to Rostov-on-Don in 1924. And since 1926, he has been studying at one of the local schools.

Having successfully completed his studies in high school, Solzhenitsyn entered Rostov University in 1936. Here he is studying at the Faculty of Physics and Metallurgy, but at the same time he does not forget to simultaneously engage in active literature - the main vocation of his whole life.

Solzhenitsyn graduated from the University in 1941 and received a diploma of higher education with honors. But before that, in 1939, he also entered the Faculty of Literature at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy. Solzhenitsyn was supposed to study here in absentia, but his plans were thwarted by the Great Patriotic War, which the Soviet Union entered in 1941.

Changes took place in Solzhenitsyn's personal life during this period: in 1940, the writer marries N. A. Reshetovskaya.

Difficult war years

Even taking into account his poor health, Solzhenitsyn strove with all his might to the front in order to protect his country from fascist capture. Once on the front, he serves in the 74th transport-drawn battalion. In 1942 he was sent to study at a military school, after which he received the rank of lieutenant.

Already in 1943, thanks to his military rank, Solzhenitsyn was appointed commander of a specialized battery engaged in sound reconnaissance. Conducting his service conscientiously, the writer earned honorary awards for him - this is the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd degree. In the same period, he is assigned another military rank- senior lieutenant.

Political position and the difficulties associated with it

Solzhenitsyn was not afraid to openly criticize without hiding his own political position. And this is despite the fact that totalitarianism at that time flourished so vehemently on the territory of the entire USSR. This could be read, for example, in the letters that the writer addressed to Vitkevich, his friend. In them, he zealously condemned the entire ideology of Leninism, which he considered distorted. And for these actions, he paid with his own freedom, having ended up in camps for 8 years. But he did not waste time in places of deprivation of liberty. Here he wrote such well-known literary works as "Tanks Know the Truth", "In the First Circle", "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", "Love the Revolution".

Health situation

In 1952, shortly before his release from the camps, Solzhenitsyn had health problems - he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. In this regard, the question arose about the operation, which the doctors successfully performed on February 12, 1952.

Life after imprisonment

A brief biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn contains information that on February 13, 1953, he left the camp, having served a prison sentence for criticizing the authorities. It was then that he was sent to Kazakhstan, to the Dzhambul region. The village where the writer settled was called Berlik. Here he got a job as a teacher and taught mathematics and physics in high school.

In January 1954, he arrived in Tashkent for treatment in a special cancer ward. Here, doctors performed radiation therapy, which gave the writer confidence in the success of the fight against a terrible deadly disease. And indeed, a miracle happened - in March 1954, Solzhenitsyn felt much better and was discharged from the clinic.

But the situation with the disease remained in his memory for the rest of his life. In the story Cancer Ward, the writer describes in detail the situation with his unusual healing. Here he makes it clear to the reader that he was helped in a difficult life situation by faith in God, the dedication of doctors, as well as an inexhaustible desire to the very end to desperately fight for own life.

Final rehabilitation

Solzhenitsyn was finally rehabilitated by the communist state regime only in 1957. In July of the same year, he becomes a completely free person and no longer fears various persecutions and oppressions. For his criticism, he received a lot of hardships from the USSR authorities, but this did not completely break his spirit and in no way affected his subsequent work.

It was during this period that the writer moved to Ryazan. There he successfully gets a job at a school and teaches astronomy to children. School teacher - this is the profession for Solzhenitsyn, which did not limit his ability to do what he loved - literature.

New conflict with the authorities

Working at the Ryazan school, Solzhenitsyn actively expresses his thoughts and views on life in numerous literary works. However, in 1965, new tests await him - the KGB seizes the entire archive of the writer's manuscripts. Now there is already a ban on creating new literary masterpieces for him, which is a disastrous punishment for any writer.

But Solzhenitsyn does not give up and tries in this period with all his might to correct the situation. For example, in 1967, in an open letter addressed to the Congress of Soviet Writers, he states his own position on what is stated in the works.

But this action had a negative effect, which turned against famous writer and historian. The fact is that in 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union of the USSR. A year earlier, in 1968, he finished writing the book The Gulag Archipelago, which made him popular all over the world. It was published in mass circulation only in 1974. It was then that the public was able to get acquainted with the work, since for a wide range Until now, it has remained unavailable to readers. And then this fact happened only when the writer lived outside his country. The book was first published not in the author's homeland, but in Paris, the capital of France.

The main stages and features of life abroad

Solzhenitsyn did not return to live in his homeland for quite a long time, because, probably, in the depths of his soul he was very offended by her for all the repressions and hardships that he had to experience in the USSR. In the period from 1975 to 1994, the writer managed to visit many countries of the world. In particular, he successfully visited Spain, France, Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and the USA. The very wide geography of his travels in no small way contributed to the popularization of the writer among the broad readership of these states.

Even in the briefest biography of Solzhenitsyn there is information that in Russia The Gulag Archipelago was published only in 1989, shortly before the final collapse of the USSR empire. It happened in the magazine "New World". His well-known story "Matrenin Dvor" is also published there.

Homecoming and a new creative impulse

Only after the USSR collapsed, Solzhenitsyn nevertheless decided to return to his homeland. It happened in 1994. In Russia, the writer is working on his new works, fully devoting himself to his beloved work. And in 2006 and 2007 whole volumes of all Solzhenitsyn's collections were published in modern binding. In total, this literary collection contains 30 volumes.

Death of a writer

Solzhenitsyn died already at an advanced age, having lived a very difficult life filled with many different difficulties and hardships. This sad event happened on May 3, 2008. The cause of death was heart failure.

Literally until his last breath, Solzhenitsyn remained true to himself and constantly created the next literary masterpieces, which are highly appreciated in many countries of the world. Probably, our descendants will appreciate everything bright and righteous that the writer wanted to convey to them.

Little Known Facts

Now you know a brief biography of Solzhenitsyn. It's time to highlight some little-known, but no less interesting facts. Of course, the whole life of such a world-famous writer can hardly go unnoticed by his admirers. After all, the fate of Solzhenitsyn is very diverse and unusual in its essence, perhaps even somewhere tragic. And during the illness with cancer, he did, for a certain time, just a hair's breadth from premature death.

1. By mistake, he entered world literature with an erroneous patronymic "Isaevich". The real middle name sounds a little different - Isaakievich. An error occurred while filling out Solzhenitsyn's passport page.
2. In the lower grades, Solzhenitsyn was ridiculed by his peers only because he wore a cross around his neck and attended church services.
3. In the camp, the writer developed a unique method of memorizing texts with the help of a rosary. Thanks to the fact that he was sorting through this object in his hands, Solzhenitsyn was able to preserve in his own memory the most important points, which he then fully reflected in his own literary works.
4. In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, but unexpectedly for everyone, he nobly refused this recognition, motivating his action by the fact that he could not accept the order from the Russian authorities, which led the country to its current sad state of development.
5. The writer called Stalin a "godfather" when distorting "Lenin's norms." This term was clearly not to the liking of Joseph Vissarionovich, which contributed to the inevitable further arrest of Solzhenitsyn.
6. At the university, the writer wrote many poems. They were included in a special Poetry Collection, which was released in 1974. The publication of this book was undertaken by the Imka-press publishing organization, which actively worked in exile.
7. Alexander Isaevich's favorite literary form should be considered the story "Polyphonic novel".
8. In there is a street that was renamed in honor of Solzhenitsyn.

Alexander Isaevich (Isaakievich) Solzhenitsyn - Russian writer, playwright, publicist, poet, public and political figure, who lived and worked in the USSR, Switzerland, the USA and Russia, Nobel Prize in Literature ( 1970 ), dissident - born December 11, 1918 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 moved to Rostov-on-Don with his mother.

Already in his youth, Solzhenitsyn realized himself as a writer. In 1937 he conceives a 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 "Red Wheel".

In 1941 Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics 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 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 took the battery out of the encirclement.

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 procedures established by him, spoke of the falsity 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 at the general camp work.

After the end of the term ( February 1953) Solzhenitsyn was sent into indefinite exile. He began to teach mathematics in the district center of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region of Kazakhstan. 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 - to a small village in the 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 February 12, 1952 he had 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 Winners".

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

Autumn 1961 familiar with the story Chief Editor magazine "New World" A.T. Tvardovsky. 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. "Sch-854" under the changed name - "One day of Ivan Denisovich" - was published in No. 11 of the magazine "New World" 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 in the Life of Ivan Denisovich".

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

For the first time, the undisguised truth was told about the camp world. 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.

“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 is a distinctive feature of almost all the works of the writer. Life for him is more symbolic and meaningful than literary fiction.

In 1964 One Day in the Life of 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 "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in No. 1 of the "New World" for 1963 Solzhenitsyn's story "Matryona's Dvor" was published. 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.

In 1963–1966 Three more stories by Solzhenitsyn were published in Novy Mir: “The Incident at the Krechetovka Station” (No. 1963 , the author's title - "The Incident at the Kochetovka Station" - was changed at the insistence of the editors due to the confrontation between the "New World" 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 the homeland until before the turn of 1989 when the Nobel lecture and chapters from the book The Gulag Archipelago are published in the journal Novy Mir.

In 1964 for the sake of publishing the novel in A.T. Tvardovsky, Solzhenitsyn revised the novel, softening the criticism of Soviet reality. Instead of ninety-six written chapters, the text contained only eighty-seven. 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, events do not leave the walls of the Marfin "sharashka". Thus, the story becomes extremely rich.

In 1955 Solzhenitsyn thinks, and in 1963–1966 writes 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 a few weeks, the scene of the action - by 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).

All attempts to print the story in the "New World" were unsuccessful. Cancer Ward, 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 consider 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 cease to be printed, and already published ones were withdrawn from libraries. The KGB spread rumors that during the war Solzhenitsyn had surrendered and collaborated with the Germans. 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 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. November 1969 Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970 Solzhenitsyn wins the Nobel Prize. The support of Western public opinion made it difficult for the authorities of the Soviet Union to crack down on the dissident writer. Solzhenitsyn talks about his opposition to communist power in the book “The calf butted with the oak”, first published in Paris. in 1975.

Since 1958 Solzhenitsyn is working on the book "The Gulag Archipelago" - a history of repressions, camps and prisons in the Soviet Union (Gulag - Main Directorate of Camps). The book has been completed in 1968. In 1973 KGB officers seized one of the copies of the manuscript. The persecution of the writer intensified. Late December 1973 in the West, the first volume of "The Archipelago ..." is published (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".

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 his article "Live not by lies" in "samizdat" - an appeal to citizens to refuse complicity in the lies that the authorities demand of them. Solzhenitsyn and his family settled in the Swiss city of Zurich, in 1976 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; 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.

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 to write "Red Wheel" late 1960- x and completed only early 1990s.

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 the chapters of this book. in 1989. May 1994 Solzhenitsyn returns 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 writes the book “How do we equip Russia. Powerful considerations." A in 1998 Solzhenitsyn publishes the 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", dedicated to the Jewish question in Russia, was published. In the "New World" the writer regularly performs late 1990s with literary-critical articles devoted to the work of Russian prose writers and poets. In the 1990s Solzhenitsyn writes several stories and novels: "Two stories" (Ego, On the edges) ("New World", 1995 , 3, 5), called "two-part" stories "Young", "Nastenka", "Apricot jam" (all - "New World", 1995 , No. 10), "Zhelyabug settlements" ("New World", 1999 , No. 3) and the story "Adlig Schwenkitten" ("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 knowing about it. Solzhenitsyn addresses the theme of guilt, betrayal and responsibility of a person for his actions.