Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008) was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and Communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag labor camp system. In FEB 1945, while serving in the Soviet army in East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn was arrested for writing derogatory comments in private letters to a friend about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin, whom he called "Khozyain" ("the boss"), and "Balabos" (Yiddish rendering of Hebrew baal ha-bayit for "master of the house"). Also he had talks with the same friend about the need of a new organization against the Soviet regime. He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58 paragraph 10 of the Soviet criminal code, and of "founding a hostile organization" under paragraph 11 He was convicted and interred in the Gulag labor camp system during 1945-1956. It was during this decade of imprisonment and exile that Solzhenitsyn abandoned Marxism and developed the philosophical and religious positions of his later life, gradually becoming a philosophically-minded Eastern Orthodox Christian as a result of his experience in prison and the camps.
Published in English in 1974
… and another Russian ex-patriate émigré to the U.S. …
