Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

[Winston]

Acclaimed novelist, historian, Nobel Prize laureate and prominent USSR dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died Sunday evening at his home of a stroke, according to Russian news service Interfax.

A towering figure of Russian literature, its public life and political discourse has once again, irrevocably, been exiled from the country he so influenced and loved.

R.I.P.

[BlackCat]

RIP

[Provost Harrison]

Only the good die old...but I suppose this is a significant loss rather than the bunch of nobodies who seem to be passing away lately.

R.I.P.

[Grandpa Troll]

R.I.P.

RUSSIAN dissident author and Nobel prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died aged 89.

News agency Interfax has sourced literary circles in Moscow, where Solzhenitsyn, who was exiled from the Soviet Union for his graphic portrayals of life in Soviet labour camps, had been living since 1994 after the fall of the USSR.

The Nobel laureate died of heart failure at 11:45pm local time Sunday, the writer's son Stepan said, according to Itar-Tass news agency.

The writer and historian had not been seen in public for months.

He had reportedly been seriously ill for months and was said to have died from complications of a stroke.

Solzhenitsyn's main work Gulag Archipelago, first published in the West in 1973, described Stalinist terror using scores of individual cases.

In 2007, the one-time exile received the highest Russian government award for his work in the humanities - the Russian State Prize.

In announcing the prize last year, Yury Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called Solzhenitsyn "the author of works without which the history of the 20th century is unthinkable".

One of Solzhenitsyn's first, most famous books, a slender volume called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, appeared in 1963 in English at the height of the Cold War.

It was the story of a former prisoner of war caught by the Germans during World War II, then returned home only to face charges of being a spy - a fate that awaited many POWs returning home to the Soviet Union.

The massive Gulag Archipelago, published in the west in 1973 and circulated in samizdat - or underground - publication within the Soviet Union, turned the world's attention to the horrors of the Soviet gulag system.

That book led to Solzhenitsyn's exile from his homeland in 1974.

Solzhenitsyn did not attend the announcement of the state prize in Moscow's Kremlin in 2007, but his wife Natalya said the writer hoped his study of Russia's history would help the country in the future.

The prize, she said, "gives a certain hope, and Alexander Isayevich (Solzhenitsyn) would be glad if that hope came to life, a hope our country will learn the lesson of its self-destruction in the 20th century and not repeat it."

The State Prize's origins date back to Soviet times, but Solzhenitsyn was just the second person to receive the prize for work in the humanities.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II received the first such prize in 2006.

[GePap]

RIP

[Nikolai]

RIP

[Lord Avalon]

RIP

[Zkribbler]

So. Which circle will he end up in?

(Bad Zkribbler! Bad! Bad! Bad!)

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
So. Which circle will he end up in?

(Bad Zkribbler! Bad! Bad! Bad!)

I am afraid that went right past me, would you explain?

Thanks

[Zkribbler]

One of his novels is "The First Circle" -- a reference to Nine Circles of Hell as portrayed by Dante.

[Imran Siddiqui]

RIP

[Nostromo]

RIP

But he had a long and meaningful life

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
One of his novels is "The First Circle" -- a reference to Nine Circles of Hell as portrayed by Dante.

Thanks

I learn much from Poly, just these meds freak with my memory

Back to the topic, thanks Zkribbler for helping me out

[Hercules]

RIP. Solzhenitsyn
Your novels were very influential. I remember reading Cancer Ward, and the Gulag Archipelago. And the First Circle.

'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' was dramatised as a BBC drama, all those years ago.

[alva]

Also read "a day in the life of [insert some russian name] ". Contrary to most of his work, it's rather short but also very good.