Solzhenitsyn had been ill for years Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89. The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure. The Nobel laureate had suffered from high blood pressure in recent years. After returning to Russia, Solzhenitsyn wrote several polemics on Russian history and identity. His son Stepan was quoted by one Russian news agency as saying his father died of heart failure, while another agency quoted literary sources as saying he had suffered a stroke. He died in his home in the Moscow area, where he had lived with his wife Natalya, at 2345 local time (1945 GMT), Stepan told Itar-Tass. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to the writer's family, a Kremlin spokesperson said. Prisoner, patient, writer Solzhenitsyn served as a Soviet artillery officer in World War II and was decorated for his courage but in 1945 was denounced for criticising Stalin in a letter. ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN Born: 11 December 1918 1945: sentenced to eight years for anti-Soviet activities 1962: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich published in Russia 1970: Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature 1974: First volume of The Gulag Archipelago published 13 February 1974: Exiled from his native Russia 1994: Returns to Russia 3 August 2008: dies in Moscow
Obituary He spent the next eight years in the Soviet prison system, or Gulag, before being internally exiled to Kazakhstan, where he was successfully treated for stomach cancer. Publication in 1962 of the novella Denisovich, an account of a day in a Gulag prisoner's life, made him a celebrity during the post-Stalin political thaw. However, within a decade, the writer awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature was out of favour again for his work, and was being harassed by the KGB secret police. In 1973, the first of the three volumes of Archipelago, a detailed account of the systematic Soviet abuses from 1918 to 1956 in the vast network of its prison and labour camps, was published in the West. Its publication sparked a furious backlash in the Soviet press, which denounced him as a traitor. Early in 1974, the Soviet authorities stripped him of his citizenship and expelled him from the country. Moral voice He settled in Vermont, in the USA, where he completed the other two volumes of Archipelago. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
In his own words While living there as a recluse, he railed against what he saw as the moral corruption of the West. Scathing of Boris Yeltsin's brand of democracy, he did not return to Russia immediately upon the collapse of the USSR in 1992, unlike other exiles. His homecoming in 1994 was a dramatic affair as he travelled in slowly by land from the Russian Far East. Solzhenitsyn's latter works, which included essays on Russia's future, courted controversy. In 2000, his last major work Two Hundred Years Together examined the position of Jews in Russian society and their role in the Revolution. What are your memories of Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Did you ever meet him? What does his work mean to you? Send us your comments about him using the form below: Name
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Alexander Solzhenitsin ganó el premio Nobel de Literatura en 1970
El escritor ruso Alexander Solzhenitsin, quien obtuvo el premio Nobel de Literatura en 1970, murió hoy a los 89 años. Solzhenitsin estaba en su casa en Moscú cuando sufrió un ataque cardíaco que acabó con su vida. Fue el autor de ''Un día en la vida de Iván Denisovich'' y ''Archipiélago Gulag'', en la que criticó duramente al estalinismo. Desde hace algunos años, el escritor sufría de presión alta.

La noticia fue confirmada por su hijo, Stepan, a la agencia Associated Press (AP); no obstante, decidió no hacer ningún comentario al respecto.

Solzhenitsin nació el 11 de diciembre de 1918 en la ciudad de Kislovodsk. Luego de sufrir por el asedio soviético, tuvo que exiliarse en 1974. Se mudó a los Estados Unidos. Finalmente, volvió en 1994, exactamente 20 años después.

Su postura sobre el comunismo soviético era muy clara: "En su país (España), dentro de ciertos límites, se toleran las huelgas. En el nuestro, y en los sesenta años de existencia del socialismo, jamás se autorizó una sola huelga. Los que participaron en los movimientos huelguísticos de los primeros años del poder soviético fueron acribillados por ráfagas de ametralladora".