Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died Sunday, will be remembered for his writing that exposed the brutality of the former Soviet Union’s communist regime.
Solzhenitsyn’s books earned him accolades — many have ranked him among the greats of Russian literature, and in 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. But his writing put him at odds with the Communist Party.
He was deported from the Soviet Union in 1974 after his history of Soviet labor and concentration camps, “The Gulag Archipelago,” was smuggled out and published in the West.
By that time, Solzhenitsyn had long since been labeled a dissident. After fighting for his country during World War II, he was sent to a gulag for eight years for criticizing Josef Stalin in a private letter. After being released in the early 1950s, he was put in “perpetual exile.” Diagnosed with cancer, he struggled to get treatment because he was a dissident.
That all became fodder for his writing, and after beating cancer, he had a handful of pieces based on his experiences published in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Then the regime once again moved to silence him. He spent two decades in exile, most of it in the United States, before returning in 1994.
His work has been hailed as helping shatter several Soviet myths and helping solidify opposition to communism in the West. He estimated that 60 million people were sent to the gulags.
But he was not without his critics. Some of his work has been viewed as anti-Semitic, a claim his supporters deny. As well, Solzhenitsyn, described as a Russian patriot, had been ridiculed for his support of leader Vladimir Putin, whom he hoped could restore Russia to greatness.
In the end, however, his legacy will be the clear warning he issued about the frightening dangers of totalitarianism.
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