Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Is Deported from the Soviet Union and Stripped of Citizenship
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a prominent Russian author and dissident, notable for his critical writings about the Soviet regime, particularly his work "The Gulag Archipelago," which exposed the brutal realities of Soviet prison camps. Born in 1918, Solzhenitsyn served as a captain in the Soviet army during World War II but was arrested in 1945 for criticizing Stalin. After his release in 1953, he began to focus on literature, gaining acclaim with his first novel, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." Despite early successes, his growing criticism of the Soviet government led to censorship and expulsion from the Writers' Union. His public statements, especially after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, heightened tensions with Soviet authorities. In February 1974, following the publication of "The Gulag Archipelago," he was stripped of his citizenship and deported to West Germany, eventually settling in the United States. Solzhenitsyn's views later turned critical of both the West and the Soviet Union, advocating for a return to traditional Russian values and spirituality. After the Soviet Union's collapse, he returned to Russia in 1994.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Is Deported from the Soviet Union and Stripped of Citizenship
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Is Deported from the Soviet Union and Stripped of Citizenship
On February 13, 1974, Russian author Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn was deported from the former Soviet Union for his dissident writings in general, and in particular for the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, a scathing exposé of life in the Soviet prison camps. Only his international prominence as an author and dissident saved him from a much harsher punishment.
Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Russia, shortly after the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union. He received his education at Rostov University, where he earned degrees in physics and mathematics. After graduating in 1941, Solzhenitsyn served in the Soviet army during World War II. He was made an officer and promoted to the rank of captain, but in 1945, as soon as the war was over, the Soviet authorities arrested him for having written a letter critical of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. It was part of a general purge after World War II: Stalin had millions of returning soldiers imprisoned out of fear that their exposure to Western ways and standards of living while fighting in Europe might make them disloyal to his regime. Solzhenitsyn was caught up in this wave of terror and imprisoned in the vast chain of prison camps that stretched across the Soviet Union like an archipelago of islands in the sea, hence the title of his later book.
Solzhenitsyn was released in 1953. Nikita Khrushchev's rise to power that same year, following Stalin's death, led to a more liberalized and tolerant environment in the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn took this opportunity to realize his lifelong interest in literature and wrote his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1962). The Soviet authorities permitted the publication of this book, which describes a prisoner's struggle to survive a typical day in a Soviet prison camp, and it won both domestic and international acclaim. Solzhenitsyn's works in the following years, however, were mostly censored by the state. He became increasingly critical of the Soviet regime and its censorship, and as a result was expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union in 1969. He continued to write, and a number of his manuscripts were smuggled to the West for publication. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his acceptance speech he said, “Mankind's salvation lies exclusively in everyone's making everything his business, in the people of the East being anything but indifferent to what is thought in the West, and in the people of the West being anything but indifferent to what happens in the East.”
This and similar statements infuriated the Soviet authorities, whose political ideology predicated an irreconcilable struggle between communism and capitalism, with an emphasis on the evil and oppressive nature of the capitalist West. Equally infuriating was Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Prize, which seemed to them a reward for anti-Soviet activities. The last straw for the authorities came in 1973 with the publication in the West of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, a searing, comprehensive account of the brutal Soviet prison-camp system, incorporating his own experiences and all he had learned from others. The Soviets arrested Solzhenitsyn in February 1974, stripped him of his citizenship, and deported him to West Germany. From there he eventually made his way to the United States.
Solzhenitsyn, one of the most prominent Soviet dissidents, was quite a celebrity at first in the West. However, his popularity faded as he made more of his views known. Solzhenitsyn was just as critical of the West as he had been of the Soviet regime, decrying its shallowness and materialism. He wanted the Russian people to throw off the shackles of the Soviet system and return to the more spiritual ways of the Holy Russia of old, not to become more Western. Solzhenitsyn's isolationist and mystical views alienated his audiences, and he largely retreated from public life. In 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he returned to Russia, where he has remained.