AMONG THE FIRST novels that changed history is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. First appearing in a Soviet journal in 1962, it put the name of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) on the map and helped change the course of Soviet Communism. Evoking comparisons with the novels of such Russian giants as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, the book spread its author’s fame, but soon he was in trouble with Soviet authorities, who began to keep his work from print. In spite of that, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970. In half a century, more than 30 million copies of his books, translated into some forty languages, were sold worldwide. Exiled from Soviet society, he later returned to Russia and outlived the Communist regime by nearly two decades. What do you know about this Russian literary giant?
TRUE OR FALSE?
1. Solzhenitsyn was first imprisoned for “disrespecting” Stalin.
2. Composed in prison with no paper, Ivan Denisovich was later written from memory.
3. Solzhenitsyn refused his Nobel Prize because he objected to Western immorality.
4. Although known primarily as a novelist, Solzhenitsyn’s most important book was a work of history.
5. During a period of enforced exile from Russia, Solzhenitsyn lived in rural Vermont.
ANSWERS
1. True. In a wartime letter he called Stalin “the man with the mustache,” earning himself a sentence of eight years in a labor camp.
2. True. Using rosary beads fashioned from chewed bread, he memorized passages until he was later able to record them.
3. False. Solzhenitsyn refused to travel to Stockholm because he feared that the Soviet authorities would not allow him ever to return.
4. True. The Gulag Archipelago (1973) is a monumental account of the Soviet labor-camp system, a chain of prisons that held as many as 60 million people during the twentieth century. The book’s publication led to Solzhenitsyn’s deportation.
5. True. He lived for eighteen years in Cavendish, Vermont, where his neighbors protected his privacy with a sign reading, “No Directions to the Solzhenitsyns.”