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90-640: Solomon Mikhoels , the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre , was appointed the JAC chairman. The JAC's newspaper in Yiddish was called Eynigkayt ( אייניקייט "Unity", Cyrillic : Эйникейт ). The JAC broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences, assuring them of the absence of antisemitism in the Soviet Union . In 1943, Mikhoels and Itzik Feffer ,

180-533: A ceremony and the ensuing media coverage might upset the Soviet Union and damage Swedish-Soviet relations. Instead, Solzhenitsyn received his prize at the 1974 ceremony after he had been expelled from the Soviet Union. In 1973, another manuscript written by Solzhenitsyn was confiscated by the KGB after his friend Elizaveta Voronyanskaya was questioned non-stop for five days until she revealed its location, according to

270-575: A discussion of its options in dealing with Solzhenitsyn, the members of the Politburo considered his arrest and imprisonment and his expulsion to a capitalist country willing to take him. Guided by KGB chief Yuri Andropov , and following a statement from West German Chancellor Willy Brandt that Solzhenitsyn could live and work freely in West Germany , it was decided to deport the writer directly to that country. On 12 February 1974, Solzhenitsyn

360-541: A gathering of thousands in central Moscow's Gorky Park. It was explicitly a Jewish rally and aimed to raise funds for the Soviet war effort from the international Jewish community. Speakers included the writer David Bergelson . Mikhoels actively supported Stalin against Adolf Hitler and, in 1942, was made the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee . In that capacity, he travelled around

450-698: A leader of the Jewish community led to increasing persecution from the Soviet state. He was assassinated in Minsk in 1948 by order of Stalin. Born Shloyme Vovsi to a family of Jewish heritage in Dvinsk, Russian Empire (now Daugavpils , Latvia ), Mikhoels studied law in Saint Petersburg , but left school in 1918 to join Alexis Granowsky 's Jewish Theater Workshop, which was attempting to create

540-445: A man who had been to Siberia for "libelous speech" about the leaders, and yet its publication had been officially permitted. In this sense, the publication of Solzhenitsyn's story was an almost unheard of instance of free, unrestrained discussion of politics through literature. However, after Khrushchev had been ousted from power in 1964, the time for such raw, exposing works came to an end. Every time when we speak about Solzhenitsyn as

630-468: A miner, bricklayer, and foundry foreman. His experiences at Ekibastuz formed the basis for the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich . One of his fellow political prisoners, Ion Moraru , remembers that Solzhenitsyn spent some of his time at Ekibastuz writing. While there, Solzhenitsyn had a tumor removed. His cancer was not diagnosed at the time. In March 1953, after his sentence ended, Solzhenitsyn

720-614: A national Jewish theater in Russia in Yiddish . The workshop moved to Moscow in 1920, where it established the Moscow State Jewish Theater . That was in keeping with Vladimir Lenin 's policy on nationalities , which encouraged them to pursue and to develop their own cultures under the aegis of the Soviet state. Mikhoels was the company's leading actor and, as of 1928, its director. His memorable roles included Tevye in an adaptation of Sholom Aleichem 's novel Tevye

810-399: A number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.' Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward

900-533: A poet and the chief editor of the Novy Mir magazine, with the manuscript of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich . It was published in edited form in 1962, with the explicit approval of Nikita Khrushchev , who defended it at the presidium of the Politburo hearing on whether to allow its publication, and added: "There's a Stalinist in each of you; there's even a Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil." The book quickly sold out and became an instant hit. In

990-464: A statement by Solzhenitsyn to Western reporters on September 6, 1973. According to Solzhenitsyn, "When she returned home, she hanged herself." The Gulag Archipelago was composed from 1958 to 1967, and has sold over thirty million copies in thirty-five languages. It was a three-volume, seven-part work on the Soviet prison camp system, which drew from Solzhenitsyn's experiences and the testimony of 256 former prisoners and Solzhenitsyn's own research into

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1080-498: A television talk show program. Its eventual format was Solzhenitsyn delivering a 15-minute monologue twice a month; it was discontinued in 1995. Solzhenitsyn became a supporter of Vladimir Putin , who said he shared Solzhenitsyn's critical view towards the Russian Revolution . All of Solzhenitsyn's sons became U.S. citizens. One, Ignat , is a pianist and conductor. Another Solzhenitsyn son, Yermolai, works for

1170-480: A traffic accident. Mikhoels's body lay in state for a day in the Jewish National Theatre. He was praised in a Pravda obituary and accorded a state funeral , with prominent members of the party and government officials among the mourners. His daughter, Natalya, and her composer husband Moisei Weinberg hosted a stream of mourners at their flat, including the composer Dmitri Shostakovich . He

1260-540: A young officer in the Imperial Russian Army of Cossack origin and fellow native of the Caucasus region. The family background of his parents is vividly brought to life in the opening chapters of August 1914 , and in the later Red Wheel novels. In 1918, Taisiya became pregnant with Aleksandr. On 15 June, shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed, Isaakiy was killed in a hunting accident. Aleksandr

1350-470: Is imbued with a hankering after an idealized Tsarist era when, seemingly, everything was rosy. He sought refuge in a dreamy past, where, he believed, a united Slavic state (the Russian empire) built on Orthodox foundations had provided an ideological alternative to western individualistic liberalism." Solzhenitsyn also repeatedly denounced Tsar Alexis of Russia and Patriarch Nikon of Moscow for causing

1440-503: Is methodically unacceptable in other fields of history", which gives priority to vague hearsay and leads towards selective bias. According to journalist Anne Applebaum , who has made extensive research on the Gulag, The Gulag Archipelago' s rich and varied authorial voice, its unique weaving together of personal testimony, philosophical analysis, and historical investigation, and its unrelenting indictment of Communist ideology made it one of

1530-601: Is nothing that so assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one's own transgressions, errors, mistakes. After the difficult cycles of such ponderings over many years, whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest-ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners, I remember myself in my Captain's shoulder boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: 'So were we any better?'" In February 1945, while serving in East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn

1620-605: The Belorussian republic , and Soviet Deputy Minister State Security , Sergei Ogoltsov , were arrested. When Beria was himself arrested, in June, Ogoltsov's wife and Tsanava pleaded for the case to be overturned. Ogoltsov was released, though Tsanava died in prison. According the former MGB officer Pavel Sudoplatov, who was assigned in 1953 to investigate the murder, Mikhoels was lured to Tsanava's country dacha , ostensibly to meet some of Byelorussia's leading dramatic artists, and

1710-792: The Great Schism of 1666 , which Solzhenitsyn said both divided and weakened the Russian Orthodox Church at a time when unity was desperately needed. Solzhenitsyn also attacked both the Tsar and the Patriarch for using excommunication , Siberian exile, imprisonment, torture, and even burning at the stake against the Old Believers , who rejected the liturgical changes which caused the Schism. Solzhenitsyn also argued that

1800-532: The Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History  [ hy ; pl ; ru ; uk ] , which by this time were heavily ideological in scope. As he himself makes clear, he did not question the state ideology or the superiority of the Soviet Union until he was sentenced to time in the camps. During the war, Solzhenitsyn served as the commander of a sound-ranging battery in the Red Army ,

1890-512: The Russian Orthodox faith; she died in 1944 having never remarried. As early as 1936, Solzhenitsyn began developing the characters and concepts for planned epic work on World War I and the Russian Revolution . This eventually led to the novel August 1914 ; some of the chapters he wrote then still survive. Solzhenitsyn studied mathematics and physics at Rostov State University . At the same time, he took correspondence courses from

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1980-640: The University of Notre Dame as part of the Kennan Institute 's Solzhenitsyn Initiative. The first, Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile (1974–1978) , was translated by Peter Constantine and published in October 2018, the second, Book 2: Exile in America (1978–1994) translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore and published in October 2020. Once back in Russia, Solzhenitsyn hosted

2070-709: The anthropocentrism of Western culture. Solzhenitsyn also received an honorary degree from the College of the Holy Cross in 1984. On 19 September 1974, Yuri Andropov approved a large-scale operation to discredit Solzhenitsyn and his family and cut his communications with Soviet dissidents . The plan was jointly approved by Vladimir Kryuchkov , Philipp Bobkov , and Grigorenko (heads of First, Second and Fifth KGB Directorates). The residencies in Geneva , London , Paris , Rome and other European cities participated in

2160-510: The forced labor camp , he memorized a poem titled " Prussian Nights " about a woman raped to death in East Prussia . In this poem, which describes the gang-rape of a Polish woman whom the Red Army soldiers mistakenly thought to be a German, the first-person narrator comments on the events with sarcasm and refers to the responsibility of official Soviet writers like Ilya Ehrenburg . In The Gulag Archipelago , Solzhenitsyn wrote, "There

2250-590: The "weakness" of the West, Solzhenitsyn always made clear that he admired the political liberty which was one of the enduring strengths of Western democratic societies. In a major speech delivered to the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein on 14 September 1993, Solzhenitsyn implored the West not to "lose sight of its own values, its historically unique stability of civic life under

2340-411: The 1960s, while Solzhenitsyn was publicly known to be writing Cancer Ward , he was simultaneously writing The Gulag Archipelago . During Khrushchev's tenure, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was studied in schools in the Soviet Union, as were three more short works of Solzhenitsyn's, including his short story " Matryona's Home ", published in 1963. These would be the last of his works published in

2430-776: The Dechristianization of Russian culture, which he considered most responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution , began in 1666, became much worse during the Reign of Tsar Peter the Great , and accelerated into an epidemic during The Enlightenment , the Romantic era , and the Silver Age . Expanding upon this theme, Solzhenitsyn once declared, "Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing

2520-558: The First Circle in 1968, August 1914 in 1971 and The Gulag Archipelago —which outraged the Soviet authorities—in 1973. In 1974, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and flown to West Germany . He moved to the United States with his family in 1976 and continued to write there. His Soviet citizenship was restored in 1990. He returned to Russia four years later and remained there until his death in 2008. Solzhenitsyn

2610-475: The Gulag. His transformation is described at some length in the fourth part of The Gulag Archipelago ("The Soul and Barbed Wire"). The narrative poem The Trail (written without benefit of pen or paper in prison and camps between 1947 and 1952) and the 28 poems composed in prison, forced-labour camp, and exile also provide crucial material for understanding Solzhenitsyn's intellectual and spiritual odyssey during this period. These "early" works, largely unknown in

2700-514: The Milkman (which was adapted for an American audience as Fiddler on the Roof ) and the title role in a Yiddish translation of Shakespeare's King Lear , in 1935. As a director he commissioned a new Bar Kochba , written by Shmuel Halkin , which the company successfully staged as a socialist turn on the traditional story . These plays were ostensibly supportive of the Soviet state; however,

2790-535: The Moscow office of McKinsey & Company , a management consultancy firm, where he is a senior partner. Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure near Moscow on 3 August 2008, at the age of 89. A burial service was held at Donskoy Monastery , Moscow, on 6 August 2008. He was buried the same day in the monastery, in a spot he had chosen. Russian and world leaders paid tribute to Solzhenitsyn following his death. Defunct According to William Harrison, Solzhenitsyn

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2880-547: The Soviet Union and his experiences. In 1962, he published his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich —an account of Stalinist repressions—with approval from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev . His last work to be published in the Soviet Union was Matryona's Place in 1963. Following the removal of Khrushchev from power, the Soviet authorities attempted to discourage Solzhenitsyn from continuing to write. He continued to work on further novels and their publication in other countries including Cancer Ward in 1966, In

2970-474: The Soviet Union until 1990. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brought the Soviet system of prison labour to the attention of the West. It caused as much of a sensation in the Soviet Union as it did in the West—not only by its striking realism and candour, but also because it was the first major piece of Soviet literature since the 1920s on a politically charged theme, written by a non-party member, indeed

3060-458: The Soviet era], Russian : Cоломон (Шлойме) Михоэлс , 16 March [ O.S. 4 March] 1890 – 13 January 1948) was a Soviet actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater . Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II . However, as Joseph Stalin pursued an increasingly anti-Jewish line after the War, Mikhoels's position as

3150-714: The Soviet mass media launched a massive propaganda campaign against " rootless cosmopolitans ", unmistakably aimed at Jews. Markish observed at the time: "Hitler wanted to destroy us physically, Stalin wants to do it spiritually." On 12 August 1952, at least thirteen prominent Yiddish writers were executed in the event known as the " Night of the Murdered Poets " ("Ночь казненных поэтов"). The size of JAC fluctuated with time. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ( 200 Years Together ), it grew to have about 70 members. Solomon Mikhoels Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels ( Yiddish : שלמה מיכאעלס [also spelled שלוימע מיכאעלס during

3240-594: The Soviet state" and sold tens of millions of copies. Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church . However, he initially lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist , and embraced Marxism–Leninism . While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II , Solzhenitsyn

3330-741: The US at the outset of the Cold War and this may have contributed to them later being accused of treason and espionage. The contacts with American Jewish organizations resulted in the plan to publish The Black Book of Soviet Jewry simultaneously in the US and the Soviet Union, documenting the Holocaust and participation of Jews in the resistance movement . The Black Book was indeed published in New York City in 1946, but no Russian edition appeared. The typeface galleys were broken up in 1948, when

3420-647: The US, $ 15 million in England, $ 1 million in Mexico, $ 750,000 in Mandatory Palestine – other help was also contributed: machinery, medical equipment, medicine, ambulances, clothes. On July 16, 1943, Pravda reported: "Mikhoels and Feffer received a message from Chicago that a special conference of the Joint initiated a campaign to finance a thousand ambulances for the needs of the Red Army ." The visit drew

3510-549: The United States to "facilitate your work, and to accommodate you and your family". He stayed at the Hoover Tower , part of the Hoover Institution , before moving to Cavendish , Vermont, in 1976. He was given an honorary literary degree from Harvard University in 1978 and on 8 June 1978 he gave a commencement address, condemning, among other things, the press, the lack of spirituality and traditional values, and

3600-476: The United States was held on July 8 at the Polo Grounds , where 50,000 people listened to Mikhoels, Feffer, Fiorello H. La Guardia , Sholem Asch , and Chairman of World Jewish Congress Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise . Among others, they met Chaim Weizmann , Charlie Chaplin , Marc Chagall , Paul Robeson and Lion Feuchtwanger . In addition to the funds for the Soviet war effort – US$ 16 million raised in

3690-550: The West diminished as he became increasingly isolated and critical of Western individualism. KGB and CPSU experts finally concluded that he alienated American listeners by his "reactionary views and intransigent criticism of the US way of life", so no further active measures would be required. Over the next 17 years, Solzhenitsyn worked on his dramatized history of the Russian Revolution of 1917 , The Red Wheel . By 1992, four sections had been completed and he had also written several shorter works. Solzhenitsyn's warnings about

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3780-481: The West, were published for the first time in Russian in 1999 and excerpted in English in 2006. On 7 April 1940, while at the university, Solzhenitsyn married Natalia Alekseevna Reshetovskaya. They had just over a year of married life before he went into the army, then to the Gulag. They divorced in 1952, a year before his release because the wives of Gulag prisoners faced the loss of work or residence permits. After

3870-574: The attention of the American public to the necessity of entering the European war. Towards the end and immediately after the war, the JAC became involved in documenting the Holocaust . This ran contrary to the official Soviet policy to present it as atrocities against all Soviet citizens, not acknowledging the specific genocide of the Jews. Committee members had international contacts especially in

3960-436: The book was essentially a "literary and political work", and "never claimed to place the camps in a historical or social-scientific quantitative perspective" but that in the case of qualitative estimates, Solzhenitsyn gave his high estimate as he wanted to challenge the Soviet authorities to show that "the scale of the camps was less than this." Historian J. Arch Getty wrote of Solzhenitsyn's methodology that "such documentation

4050-468: The character of Lev Rubin in his book The First Circle , published in a self-censored or "distorted" version in the West in 1968 (an English translation of the full version was eventually published by Harper Perennial in October 2009). In 1950, Solzhenitsyn was sent to a "Special Camp" for political prisoners. During his imprisonment at the camp in the town of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan , he worked as

4140-755: The collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Union of Writers. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature . He could not receive the prize personally in Stockholm at that time, since he was afraid he would not be let back into the Soviet Union. Instead, it was suggested he should receive the prize in a special ceremony at the Swedish embassy in Moscow. The Swedish government refused to accept this solution because such

4230-476: The crimes of the Vlasovites and Bandera gangs ." According to the editorial, Solzhenitsyn was "choking with pathological hatred for the country where he was born and grew up, for the socialist system, and for Soviet people." During this period, he was sheltered by the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich , who suffered considerably for his support of Solzhenitsyn and was eventually forced into exile himself. In

4320-480: The dangers of Communist aggression and the weakening of the moral fiber of the West were generally well received in Western conservative circles (e.g. Ford administration staffers Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld advocated on Solzhenitsyn's behalf for him to speak directly to President Gerald Ford about the Soviet threat), prior to and alongside the tougher foreign policy pursued by US President Ronald Reagan . At

4410-716: The effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.'" In an interview with Joseph Pearce , however, Solzhenitsyn commented, "[The Old Believers were] treated amazingly unjustly because some very insignificant, trifling differences in ritual which were promoted with poor judgment and without much sound basis. Because of these small differences, they were persecuted in very many cruel ways, they were suppressed, they were exiled. From

4500-412: The end of his internal exile, they remarried in 1957, divorcing a second time in 1972. Reshetovskaya wrote negatively of Solzhenitsyn in her memoirs, accusing him of having affairs, and said of the relationship that "[Solzhenitsyn]'s despotism ... would crush my independence and would not permit my personality to develop." In her 1974 memoir, Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , she wrote that she

4590-467: The enemy of the Soviet regime, this just happens to coincide with some important [international] events and we postpone the decision. — Andrei Kirilenko , a Politburo member Solzhenitsyn made an unsuccessful attempt, with the help of Tvardovsky, to have his novel Cancer Ward legally published in the Soviet Union. This required the approval of the Union of Writers . Though some there appreciated it,

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4680-535: The establishment of a strong presidential republic balanced by vigorous institutions of local self-government. The latter would remain his major political theme. Solzhenitsyn also published eight two-part short stories, a series of contemplative "miniatures" or prose poems, and a literary memoir on his years in the West The Grain Between the Millstones , translated and released as two works by

4770-692: The first official representatives of the Soviet Jewry allowed to visit the West , embarked on a seven-month tour to the United States, Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom to increase their support for the Lend-Lease . In the US, they were welcomed by a National Reception Committee chaired by Albert Einstein and by B.Z. Goldberg, Sholem Aleichem 's son-in-law, and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee . The largest pro-Soviet rally ever in

4860-497: The historian Jeffrey Veidlinger has argued that closer readings suggest that they actually contained veiled critiques of Joseph Stalin 's regime and assertions of Jewish national identity . Ukrainian director Les Kurbas seems to have had a lasting influence on Mikhoel's directing style. By the mid-1930s, Mikhoels's career was threatened because of his association with other leading intelligentsia members who were victims of Stalin's Great Purge . On August 24, 1941, Mikhoels led

4950-550: The history of the Russian penal system. It discusses the system's origins from the founding of the Communist regime, with Vladimir Lenin having responsibility, detailing interrogation procedures, prisoner transports, prison camp culture, prisoner uprisings and revolts such as the Kengir uprising , and the practice of internal exile . Soviet and Communist studies historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft wrote that

5040-418: The local population solves most of its problems on its own, not waiting for the decisions of higher authorities.'" Solzhenitsyn's patriotism was inward-looking. He called for Russia to "renounce all mad fantasies of foreign conquest and begin the peaceful long, long long period of recuperation," as he put it in a 1979 BBC interview with Latvian-born BBC journalist Janis Sapiets. In 1990, his Soviet citizenship

5130-498: The moral foundations of the Soviet regime. While serving as an artillery officer in East Prussia , Solzhenitsyn witnessed war crimes against local German civilians by Soviet military personnel. Of the atrocities, Solzhenitsyn wrote: "You know very well that we've come to Germany to take our revenge" for Nazi atrocities committed in the Soviet Union . The noncombatants and the elderly were robbed of their meager possessions and women and girls were gang-raped . A few years later, in

5220-670: The most influential books of the 20th century. On 8 August 1971, the KGB allegedly attempted to assassinate Solzhenitsyn using an unknown chemical agent (most likely ricin ) with an experimental gel-based delivery method. The attempt left him seriously ill, but he survived. Although The Gulag Archipelago was not published in the Soviet Union, it was extensively criticized by the Party-controlled Soviet press. An editorial in Pravda on 14 January 1974 accused Solzhenitsyn of supporting "Hitlerites" and making "excuses for

5310-419: The most well-known of his writings, The Gulag Archipelago . The seizing of his novel manuscript first made him desperate and frightened, but gradually he realized that it had set him free from the pretenses and trappings of being an "officially acclaimed" writer, a status which had become familiar but which was becoming increasingly irrelevant. After the KGB had confiscated Solzhenitsyn's materials in Moscow, in

5400-591: The operation. Among other active measures, at least three StB agents became translators and secretaries of Solzhenitsyn (one of them translated the poem Prussian Nights ), keeping the KGB informed regarding all contacts by Solzhenitsyn. The KGB also sponsored a series of hostile books about Solzhenitsyn, most notably a "memoir published under the name of his first wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya, but probably mostly composed by Service A", according to historian Christopher Andrew . Andropov also gave an order to create "an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion between Pauk and

5490-533: The people around him" by feeding him rumors that the people around him were KGB agents, and deceiving him at every opportunity. Among other things, he continually received envelopes with photographs of car crashes, brain surgery and other disturbing imagery. After the KGB harassment in Zürich , Solzhenitsyn settled in Cavendish , Vermont, and reduced communications with others. His influence and moral authority for

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5580-421: The political situation of Soviet Jewry deteriorated. In January 1948, Mikhoels was killed in Minsk by Ministry of State Security agents who staged the murder as a car accident. The members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested. They were charged with disloyalty, bourgeois nationalism , cosmopolitanism, and planning to establish Jewish autonomy in Crimea to serve US interests. In January 1949,

5670-416: The rule of law—a hard-won stability which grants independence and space to every private citizen." In a series of writings, speeches, and interviews after his return to his native Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn spoke about his admiration for the local self-government he had witnessed first hand in Switzerland and New England . He "praised 'the sensible and sure process of grassroots democracy , in which

5760-556: The same time, liberals and secularists became increasingly critical of what they perceived as his reactionary preference for Russian nationalism and the Russian Orthodox religion . Solzhenitsyn also harshly criticised what he saw as the ugliness and spiritual vapidity of the dominant pop culture of the modern West, including television and much of popular music: "...the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits... by TV stupor and by intolerable music." Despite his criticism of

5850-418: The short story "The Right Hand." It was during this decade of imprisonment and exile that Solzhenitsyn developed the philosophical and religious positions of his later life, gradually becoming a philosophically minded Eastern Orthodox Christian as a result of his experience in prison and the camps. He repented for some of his actions as a Red Army captain, and in prison compared himself to the perpetrators of

5940-469: The victory in the Great Patriotic War . From his cell in the Lubyanka, Solzhenitsyn remembered: "Above the muzzle of our window, and from all the other cells of the Lubyanka, and from all the windows of the Moscow prisons, we too, former prisoners of war and former front-line soldiers, watched the Moscow heavens, patterned with fireworks and crisscrossed with beams of searchlights. There was no rejoicing in our cells and no hugs and no kisses for us. That victory

6030-491: The work was ultimately denied publication unless it was to be revised and cleaned of suspect statements and anti-Soviet insinuations. After Khrushchev's removal in 1964, the cultural climate again became more repressive. Publishing of Solzhenitsyn's work quickly stopped; as a writer, he became a non-person, and, by 1965, the KGB had seized some of his papers, including the manuscript of In The First Circle . Meanwhile, Solzhenitsyn continued to secretly and feverishly work on

6120-438: The world and met with Jewish communities to encourage them to support the Soviet Union in its war against Nazi Germany . That was useful to Stalin during World War II , but after the war, Stalin opposed contacts between Soviet Jews and Jewish communities in noncommunist countries, particularly Mikhoels' aims of establishing Jewish autonomy in Crimea , which he regarded as a plot by American capitalists. The Jewish State Theater

6210-448: The years 1965 to 1967, the preparatory drafts of The Gulag Archipelago were turned into finished typescript in hiding at his friends' homes in Soviet Estonia . Solzhenitsyn had befriended Arnold Susi , a lawyer and former Minister of Education of Estonia in a Lubyanka Building prison cell. After completion, Solzhenitsyn's original handwritten script was kept hidden from the KGB in Estonia by Arnold Susi's daughter Heli Susi until

6300-467: Was "perplexed" that the West had accepted The Gulag Archipelago as "the solemn, ultimate truth", saying its significance had been "overestimated and wrongly appraised". Pointing out that the book's subtitle is "An Experiment in Literary Investigation", she said that her husband did not regard the work as "historical research, or scientific research". She contended that it was, rather, a collection of "camp folklore", containing "raw material" which her husband

6390-403: Was a Russian author and Soviet dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union , especially the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". His non-fiction work The Gulag Archipelago "amounted to a head-on challenge to

6480-578: Was a famous physician. He was arrested during the Doctors' plot affair but released after Stalin's death in 1953, as was Mikhoels' son-in-law, the Polish-born composer Mieczysław Weinberg . In 1983, Mikhoels' daughter, Natalia Vovsi-Mikoels, wrote a biography of her father: My Father Shlomo Mikhoels: The Life and Death of a Jewish Actor . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)

6570-474: Was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58 , paragraph 10 of the Soviet criminal code, and of "founding a hostile organization" under paragraph 11. Solzhenitsyn was taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was interrogated. On 9 May 1945, it was announced that Germany had surrendered and all of Moscow broke out in celebrations with fireworks and searchlights illuminating the sky to celebrate

6660-576: Was an "arch- reactionary ", who argued that the Soviet State "suppressed" traditional Russian and Ukrainian culture , who called for the creation of a united Slavic state encompassing Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus , and who was a fierce opponent of Ukrainian independence . It is well documented that his negative views on Ukrainian independence became more radical over the years. Harrison also alleged that Solzhenitsyn held Pan-Slavist and monarchist views. According to Harrison, "His historical writing

6750-858: Was arrested and deported the next day from the Soviet Union to Frankfurt , West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. The KGB had found the manuscript for the first part of The Gulag Archipelago . U.S. military attaché William Odom managed to smuggle out a large portion of Solzhenitsyn's archive, including the author's membership card for the Writers' Union and his Second World War military citations. Solzhenitsyn paid tribute to Odom's role in his memoir Invisible Allies (1995). In West Germany, Solzhenitsyn lived in Heinrich Böll 's house in Langenbroich . He then moved to Zürich , Switzerland before Stanford University invited him to stay in

6840-481: Was arrested by SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a private letter. As a result of his experience in prison and the camps, he gradually became a philosophically minded Eastern Orthodox Christian . As a result of the Khrushchev Thaw , Solzhenitsyn was released and exonerated. He pursued writing novels about repression in

6930-409: Was arrested by SMERSH for writing derogatory comments in private letters to a friend, Nikolai Vitkevich, about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin , whom he called "Khozyain" ("the boss"), and "Balabos" (Yiddish rendering of Hebrew baal ha-bayit for "master of the house"). He also had talks with the same friend about the need for a new organization to replace the Soviet regime. Solzhenitsyn

7020-711: Was born in Kislovodsk (now in Stavropol Krai , Russia). His father, Isaakiy Semyonovich Solzhenitsyn, was of Russian descent and his mother, Taisiya Zakharovna (née Shcherbak), was of Ukrainian descent. Taisiya's father had risen from humble beginnings to become a wealthy landowner, acquiring a large estate in the Kuban region in the northern foothills of the Caucasus and during World War I , Taisiya had gone to Moscow to study. While there she met and married Isaakiy,

7110-533: Was buried at the New Donskoy Cemetery , in Moscow. Even at the time, many people suspected that his death was not an accident, including the Yiddish poet Peretz Markish , who hinted in a poem that Mikhoels's name should be added to the six million victims of The Holocaust . Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva , later wrote that: One day, in my father's dacha ... I entered his room when he

7200-508: Was closed, and the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested. All but two were eventually executed in the purges shortly before Stalin's death. On the morning of 13 January 1948, workmen discovered Mikhoels's dead body lying in snow in a quiet street in Minsk . The theatre critic Vladimir Golubov-Potapov  [ ru ] was lying dead beside him. It was announced that they had been killed in

7290-576: Was freed from exile and exonerated . Following his return from exile, Solzhenitsyn was, while teaching at a secondary school during the day, spending his nights secretly engaged in writing. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech he wrote that "during all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared this would become known." In 1960, aged 42, Solzhenitsyn approached Aleksandr Tvardovsky ,

7380-594: Was involved in major action at the front, and was twice decorated. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star on 8 July 1944 for sound-ranging two German artillery batteries and adjusting counterbattery fire onto them, resulting in their destruction. A series of writings published late in his life, including the early uncompleted novel Love the Revolution! , chronicle his wartime experience and growing doubts about

7470-542: Was not ours." On 7 July 1945, he was sentenced in his absence by Special Council of the NKVD to an eight-year term in a labour camp . This was the usual sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time. The first part of Solzhenitsyn's sentence was served in several work camps; the "middle phase", as he later referred to it, was spent in a sharashka (a special scientific research facility run by Ministry of State Security), where he met Lev Kopelev , upon whom he based

7560-496: Was planning to use in his future productions. In 1973, Solzhenitsyn married his second wife, Natalia Dmitrievna Svetlova, a mathematician who had a son, Dmitri Turin, from a brief prior marriage. He and Svetlova (born 1939) had three sons: Yermolai (1970), Ignat (1972), and Stepan (1973). Dmitri Turin died on 18 March 1994, aged 32, at his home in New York City. After Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956, Solzhenitsyn

7650-507: Was raised by his widowed mother and his aunt in lowly circumstances. His earliest years coincided with the Russian Civil War . By 1930 the family property had been turned into a collective farm . Later, Solzhenitsyn recalled that his mother had fought for survival and that they had to keep his father's background in the old Imperial Army a secret. His educated mother encouraged his literary and scientific learnings and raised him in

7740-722: Was restored, and, in 1994, he returned to Russia with his wife, Natalia, who had become a United States citizen. Their sons stayed behind in the United States (later, his eldest son Yermolai returned to Russia). From then until his death, he lived with his wife in a dacha in Troitse-Lykovo in west Moscow between the dachas once occupied by Soviet leaders Mikhail Suslov and Konstantin Chernenko . A staunch believer in traditional Russian culture , Solzhenitsyn expressed his disillusionment with post-Soviet Russia in works such as Rebuilding Russia  [ ru ] , and called for

7830-538: Was secretly given the Order of Lenin "for exemplary execution of a special assignment from the government". After Stalin's death in March 1953, Lavrentiy Beria regained control of the Ministry for State Security (MGB), which he had temporarily lost, and on 2 April, he informed the party praesidium that Mikhoels and Golubov had been murdered. The men he accused of the murders, Tsanava, Minister of State Security for

7920-522: Was sent to internal exile for life at Birlik , a village in Baidibek District of South Kazakhstan . His undiagnosed cancer spread until, by the end of the year, he was close to death. In 1954, Solzhenitsyn was permitted to be treated in a hospital in Tashkent , where his tumor went into remission. His experiences there became the basis of his novel Cancer Ward and also found an echo in

8010-544: Was speaking to someone on the telephone. Something was being reported to him and he was listening, Then, as a summary of the conversation he said, 'Well, it's an automobile accident.' I remember so well the way he said it ... He wasn't asking: he was suggesting 'an automobile accident' ... a little later, he said: 'Mikhoels has been killed in an automobile accident'. But the next day ... a girl student told me, weeping, how brutally Mikhoels had been murdered." Two weeks after Mikhoels' death, his alleged assassin, Lavrentiy Tsanava ,

8100-484: Was stabbed with a poison needle by an MGB officer named Lebedev, with Tsanava and Ogoltsov supervising the operation. Golubov was an MGB informer, who was also killed by the chekists because he was an "inconvenient witness". Mikhoels was married to Anastasia Pototskaya , a Russian of Polish descent. He had two daughters from his first marriage to Sara Kantor, Nina and Natalya Vovsi. Mikhoels' cousin Miron Vovsi

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