00:27The Nobel Prize in Literature 1970 was awarded to Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
00:34for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.
00:40Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer who was imprisoned for his criticism of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin
00:48and later exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile.
00:55He was born Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, southern Russia.
01:03He was born six months after the tragic death of his father, who was an army artillery officer.
01:09His mother spoke English and French.
01:12She encouraged Solzhenitsyn's interest in literature and science.
01:17In 1936-1941 he studied at the Rostov State University, graduating with degrees in mathematics and physics.
01:26In 1939-1941 he also took correspondence courses in literature from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History.
01:35During the Second World War, Solzhenitsyn served as an artillery captain in the Red Army.
01:41He was involved in major battles at the front as a commander of an artillery unit and was twice decorated for courage.
01:49In February of 1945 he was fighting against the Nazis on the territory of East Prussia.
01:55There he was arrested by the Soviet secret service because they opened all his private letters and found one line critical of Joseph Stalin.
02:05Solzhenitsyn was tried in his absence by a three-man tribunal of the Soviet security police and was sentenced to eight years of prison just for describing Joseph Stalin as a man with moustache in a private letter to a friend.
02:21Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in Soviet gulag prison camps.
02:26There he was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach.
02:30He was forced to work as a miner, a bricklayer, a foundry man and as a mathematician.
02:36His mathematical skills really saved his life because he was released from prison camp and was eventually used in the secret Sharashka prison camp for scientists.
02:47And was eventually used in the secret Sharashka prison camp for scientists.
02:52After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 he was sent to a Tashkent hospital for tumour removal and radiation therapy.
03:02He described his experience of the treatment and recovery from cancer in his novel Cancer Ward.
03:09Solzhenitsyn was secretly writing a thorough account of his life in prison camps.
03:14That became the content of his first official publication in 1962.
03:19He gave Alexander Twardovsky his autobiographical story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,
03:27which was allowed for publication after personal permission from Nikita Khrushchev.
03:33That one sensational publication gave Solzhenitsyn a brief chance to publish one more small work during the thaw that was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev.
03:44Solzhenitsyn was one of the leading dissidents in the Soviet Union and was active against the Soviet Communist regime.
03:52After the publication of Gulag Archipelago abroad in 1973 he was arrested again and charged with anti-Soviet treason, then exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974.
04:06Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 and was granted a suburban house in Moscow.
04:14His wife and three sons remained American citizens.
04:18Back in Moscow Solzhenitsyn enjoyed full recognition and wide publication of all his works.
04:24He was an active and important figure in Russian society because of his independent position and sharp criticism of the declining state of affairs in Russia.
04:35He refused to take a ward from the Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
04:40Alexander Solzhenitsyn died at age 89 on August 3, 2008 at his home near Moscow.
04:47Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of the greatest
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