Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, southern Russia, in December 1918, one year after the establishment of Soviet power. Apart from a few weeks in January/February 1945, when as a captain in the advancing Red Army he found himself in Poland and East Prussia, and until his expulsion by the authorities to the West in February 1974, his experience was entirely “Soviet”. In apparent contradiction of Marx's celebrated dictum that “being determines consciousness”, he became in his mature years the single most powerful intellectual challenge to the Soviet system and its claims to legitimacy. While still resident in the Soviet Union, he moved from being a fervent Marxist, in his university days, to becoming a devout Christian and staunch Russian nationalist. Depending…
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Citation: Porter, Robert. "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 October 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4145, accessed 23 November 2024.]
