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academyofpoets

Published on : 26 August, 2014 Published by : Sharon Browning

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On this day, December 11, in 1918, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia. An outspoken critic of Communist totalitarianism, his books, including The Gulag Archipelago (1973) and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), shed light on Soviet labor camps. Although he served in the Red Army (twice decorated) some of his personal letters criticizing Stalin were intercepted and he was convicted in 1945 of “founding a hostile organization.” Promptly imprisoned, he did not see freedom until 1956. Following an assassination attempt in 1971, he was deported in 1974 but returned to Moscow in 1994 once the Soviet Union had dissolved. He died of heart failure in 2008, at age 89.

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