Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born on the 11th of December 1918 in Kislovodsk. His father Isaakiy Semyonovich Solzhenitsyn died in a hunting accident on the 15th of June 1918, just months before his birth.
SMERSH arrested Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in February 1945 for nineteen months of correspondence with friend Nikolai Vitkevich criticizing Joseph Stalin. The Special Council of the NKVD sentenced him to eight years in a labor camp on the 7th of July 1945.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich appeared in edited form in 1962 after receiving explicit approval from Nikita Khrushchev who defended its release. The book sold out quickly becoming an instant hit within the Soviet Union.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 but could not attend the ceremony personally fearing return ban. He instead received the prize at the 1974 ceremony after expulsion from the Soviet Union.
After deportation to Frankfurt West Germany on the 12th of February 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived briefly in Heinrich Böll's house before moving to Zürich Switzerland. By 1976 he settled in Cavendish Vermont where Stanford University facilitated work for his family.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure on the 3rd of August 2008 near Moscow age eighty-nine. A burial service held at Donskoy Monastery Moscow on the 6th of August 2008 took place at a spot chosen by himself.