Alexander Solzhenitsyn: (Dec. 11, 1918 - Aug. 3, 2008)

Even in chains we ourselves must complete
That circle which the gods have mapped out for us- Vladimir Solov'ev:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died late Sunday evening at age 89, his son said in a statement.

Solzhenitsyn's unflinching accounts of torment and survival in the Soviet Union's slave labor camps riveted his countrymen, whose secret history he exposed. They earned him 20 years of bitter exile, but international renown. And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire. LINK

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the oldest living Nobele Laureate.

He has written over thirty books beginning with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962,). In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, he said:

So also we, holding Art in our hands, confidently consider ourselves to be its masters; boldly we direct it, we renew, reform and manifest it; we sell it for money, use it to please those in power; turn to it at one moment for amusement - right down to popular songs and night-clubs, and at another - grabbing the nearest weapon, cork or cudgel - for the passing needs of politics and for narrow-minded social ends. But art is not defiled by our efforts, neither does it thereby depart from its true nature, but on each occasion and in each application it gives to us a part of its secret inner light.

And then like a neuro-surgeon's scalp he wielded his words to speculate further: 

But shall we ever grasp the whole of that light? Who will dare to say that he has DEFINED Art, enumerated all its facets? Perhaps once upon a time someone understood and told us, but we could not remain satisfied with that for long; we listened, and neglected, and threw it out there and then, hurrying as always to exchange even the very best - if only for something new! And when we are told again the old truth, we shall not even remember that we once possessed it. LINK

A man of letters, a man of arts he never minced words. Others accused him of being anti-Semite, anti-Soviet, anti-West, anti-US. He ignored the epithets and ploughed on. His three-volume The Gulag Archipelago earned him an exile in 1974. He was invited to move to the US in 1976 and he remained there until his return to Russia in 1994.

In an interview he gave SPIEGEL when asked if he was afraid of dying he replied: "No, I am not afraid of death any more. When I was young the early death of my father cast a shadow over me — he died at the age of 27 — and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one’s existence."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn bibliography