Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dies At 89
MOSCOW (AP) — The Nobel Prize-winning author whose books chronicled the horrors of the Soviet gulag system has died of heart failure.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was 89.
His son Stepan told The Associated Press his father died late Sunday, but declined further comment.
Solzhenitsyn riveted his countrymen with unflinching accounts of the Soviet Union’s slave labor camps in such books as “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” and the “Gulag Archipelago” trilogy. They earned him 20 years of bitter exile, but international renown.
The West offered him shelter and accolades. But Solzhenitsyn’s refusal to bend also gave him the courage to criticize Western culture for what he considered its weakness and decadence.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev restored Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship in 1990. The author returned to his native land in 1994.
