Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, Russian SFSR. He served in the Red Army during World War II and was arrested in 1945 for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend. He was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp, followed by internal exile in Kazakhstan.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Solzhenitsyn was released from exile and began writing about his experiences in the Gulag. His novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1962) was the first major work of Soviet literature to depict the harsh realities of life in the labor camps. The novel was published in the Soviet Union with the approval of Nikita Khrushchev, who was then the leader of the Soviet Union.
Solzhenitsyn's next major work, "The Gulag Archipelago" (1973-1978), was a three-volume history of the Soviet labor camp system. The book was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in the West, where it became a bestseller. The publication of "The Gulag Archipelago" led to Solzhenitsyn's expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974.
Solzhenitsyn continued to write after his expulsion from the Soviet Union. His later works include "Cancer Ward" (1968), "August 1914" (1971), and "The Red Wheel" (1971-1991), a multi-volume historical novel about the Russian Revolution.
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He returned to Russia in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He died in 2008 at the age of 89.
Solzhenitsyn's writing has had a profound impact on the world's understanding of the Soviet Union. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and has sold millions of copies. He is considered one of the most important writers of the 20th century.