Russian writer, known for his works denouncing censorship and describing his prison experiences while in exile in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He was born in Kislovodsk. He served in the Soviet Army from 1941 to 1945, when he was sentenced to eight years in prison for anti-Stalinist remarks written to a friend. Exiled to central Russia, his prison experiences were the background for his first novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). In 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union for denouncing the official censorship that had suppressed some of his writings. He received the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was deported to West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany) and deprived of his Soviet citizenship in February 1974. Subsequently he settled in the United States. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 (1973-1975), The Gulag Archipelago 2, (1975), and The Gulag Archipelago 3 (1975) are massively documented exposés of the Soviet prison system, terrorism, and secret police. Soviet officials dropped charges of treason against him in 1991, and Solzhenitsyn returned to live in Russia in May 1994.
