Alexander Solzhenitsyn – 20th-century Russian writer, author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A WWII veteran and survivor of Soviet camps, he won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works exposed Soviet repression and became a symbol of truth and resistance.
⚔️ Fought in WWII as an artillery officer and was wounded. ⛓️ Arrested in 1945 for letters critical of Stalin, sentenced to 8 years in camps. 📖 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) was the first open account of Gulag life. 📚 The Gulag Archipelago circulated in samizdat and became a sensation abroad. 🏆 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 but barred from leaving the USSR. 🚷 Expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, stripped of citizenship. 🌍 Lived in Switzerland and the U.S., working on multivolume works about Russia. 🏠 Returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet collapse. 😲 Curious fact: in camps he memorised poems instead of writing them down to avoid confiscation. 😄 Funny fact: in America he mowed grass with a sickle, to the astonishment of his neighbours.