Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isayevich (1918- )

Russian novelist. He became a US citizen in 1974. He was in prison and exile 1945-57 for anti-Stalinist comments. Much of his writing is semi-autobiographical and highly critical of the system of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), which deals with the labour camps under Stalin, and The Gulag Archipelago (1973), an exposé of the whole Soviet labour-camp network. The latter work led to his expulsion from the USSR in 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.

Other works include The First Circle and Cancer Ward (both 1968), and his historical novel August 1914 (1971). His autobiography, The Oak and the Calf, appeared in 1980. In 1994, cleared of the original charges of treason, he returned to Russia.