Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 and grew up in Rostov-on-Don. He graduated in Physics
and Mathematics from Rostov University and studied Literature by correspondence course at
Moscow University. In World War II he fought as an artillery officer attaining the rank of
captain. In 1945 however after making derogatory remarks about Stalin in a letter he was
arrested and summarily sentenced to eight years in forced labour camps followed by internal
exile. In 1957 he formally rehabilitated and settled down to teaching and writing in Ryazan
and Moscow. The publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir in 1962 was
followed by publication in the West of his novels Cancer Ward and The First Circle . In 1970
he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and in 1974 his citizenship was revoked and he
was expelled from the Soviet Union. He settled in Vermont and worked on his great historical
cycle The Red Wheel . In 1990 with the fall of Soviet Communism his citizenship was restored
and four years later he returned to settle in Russia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died in August
2008.
