Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. Curriculum vitae

Diaries and Passing

Passing In September 1962, I was not in the editorial office. Meanwhile, events developed as follows: between 9 and 14 September B.C. Lebedev in the south read aloud the story of Solzhenitsyn N.S. Khrushchev and A.I. Mikoyan. September 15 (or 16) - called Tvardovsky at home with the news that the story of Khrushchev

In passing I will interrupt the diary for a later note. In the 1970s, one of the heirs of Viktor Sergeevich Golovanov, the censor of Novy Mir, handed me a notebook left over from the deceased. On the cover it says: “Notebook 1. Passage of materials on the magazine "New World" with

In passing I interrupt my notes again for the sake of the diary of the censor Golovanov. Only on November 14, from a conversation with the editor-in-chief of Goslitizdat A.I. Puzikov, he learned the details of Tvardovsky's conversation with Khrushchev, which consolidated the stunning decision - to publish the "camp

In passing We were still living in euphoria from the success of One Day, and censorship was still wary of us after what had happened. But in early December, N.S. Khrushchev unexpectedly visited the exhibition of the Moscow Union of Artists in the Manege. Incited by V.A. Serov and other leaders of the Union of Artists, and perhaps

In passing In the evening issue of Izvestia 29. III. 1963 published an article by V. Poltoratsky "Matryona Dvor and its environs" - the first, apart from Kozhevnikov's review, a response to Solzhenitsyn's story.6. IV. 1963<…>We made an insert in the front line for No. 4 - about "Matryona Dvor". Censorship

Passing In fact, the number was released only at the end of January. The date 29.XP.63, apparently, was given not according to the last, but according to the first sheet signed for printing. The censorship continued to do so, in accordance with a special instruction, in order to disorient those readers, here and in the West,

Associated<…>A.I. Todorsky, glorified in his book, had a difficult fate. Lenin spoke about his pamphlet A Year with a Rifle and a Plow in 1920. Leaving the camp, Todorsky, himself a retired lieutenant general, spent useful work- wrote something that was not published anywhere then

Passing At first glance, the article in Literaturnaya Gazeta had no mood or mood. Praise for "meticulous quoting" and, a few paragraphs later, reproach the critic for "truncation of citations"; call themselves defenders of the story and its hero - and at the same time express dissatisfaction

Passing I didn't write it down in my diary, but I remember that evening distinctly. Busy with Ehrenburg's stories, I jumped out late, caught a taxi with difficulty and rushed to Zhuravlev Square, to the television theater, where I promised to be an hour before the start. The fact is that the transfer, as in those

A year later, I read M. Mikhailov’s essays “Moscow, 1964”, published in many countries, from which, it seems, his misadventures began: his trial, years in prison, then emigration to the West. In Mikhailov’s essays, a special chapter was devoted to our conversation . He passed

In passing The end of 1964 and the beginning of 1965 were marked for us by troubles around Tvardovsky's article "On the occasion of the anniversary", prepared for the opening of the 1st issue. In January, the magazine, founded in 1925, turned 40 years old.<…>Censorship marks in the article “On the occasion

At one time, M. Gorky very accurately described the inconsistency of the character of a Russian person: “Piebald people are good and bad together.” In many ways, this "piebaldness" became the subject of research by Solzhenitsyn.

The protagonist of the story “The Incident at the Kochetonka Station” (1962), a young lieutenant Vasya Zotov, embodies the kindest human traits: intelligence, openness towards a front-line soldier or encirclement who entered the room of the linear commandant’s office, a sincere desire to help in any situation. Two female images, only slightly outlined by the writer, set off the deep purity of Zotov, and even the very thought of betraying his wife, who was in occupation under the Germans, is impossible for him.

The compositional center of the story is Zotov's meeting with his entourage lagging behind his echelon, which strikes him with its intelligence and gentleness. Everything - the words, the intonations of the voice, the gentle gestures of this man, who is capable of holding on with dignity and gentleness even in the monstrous flaw put on him - attracts the hero: he “was extremely pleased with his manner of speaking; his manner of stopping if it seemed that the interlocutor wanted to object; his manner of not waving his arms, but somehow light movements fingers to explain their speech. He reveals to him his half-childish dreams of escaping to Spain, talks about his longing for the front and looks forward to several hours of wonderful communication with an intelligent, cultured and knowledgeable person- an actor before the war, a militia without a rifle - at its beginning, a recent entourage who miraculously got out of the German “cauldron” and now lagged behind his train - without documents, with a meaningless follow-up sheet, in essence, and not a document. And here the author shows the struggle of two principles in the soul of Zotov: human and inhuman, evil, suspicious. Already after a spark of understanding ran between Zotov and Tveritinov, which once arose between Marshal Davout and Pierre Bezukhov, which then saved Pierre from execution, a circular appears in Zotov’s mind, crossing out the sympathy and trust that arose between two hearts that had not yet had time to stand still on war. “The lieutenant put on his glasses and again looked at the catch-up list. The follow-up sheet, in fact, was not a real document, it was drawn up from the words of the applicant and could contain the truth, or it could also be a lie. The instruction demanded to be extremely attentive to the encircled, and even more so to the loners. And Tveritinov’s accidental slip of the tongue (he only asks what Stalingrad used to be called) turns into disbelief in Zotov’s young and pure soul, already poisoned by the poison of suspicion: “And - everything broke off and went cold in Zotov<...>. So, not an encirclement. Sent! Agent! Probably a white émigré, that’s why the manners are like that.” What saved Pierre did not save the unfortunate and helpless Tveritinov - a young lieutenant "surrenders" a man who has just fallen in love and is so sincerely interested in him in the NKVD, and last words Tveritinova: “What are you doing! What are you doing!<...>You can't fix this!!" - are confirmed by the last, accordant, as always with Solzhenitsyn, phrase: "But never later in his whole life Zotov could not forget this man ...".

Naive kindness and cruel suspicion - two qualities that seem to be incompatible, but quite conditioned Soviet era 30s, - are combined in the soul of the hero.

The inconsistency of character appears sometimes from the comic side - as in the story "Zakhar-Kalita" (1965).

This short story is built entirely on contradictions, and in this sense it is very characteristic of the writer's poetics. Its deliberately lightened beginning, as it were, parodies the common motifs of the confessional or lyrical prose of the 60s, which clearly simplify the problem of the national character.

“My friends, are you asking me to tell you something from the summer cycling?” - this opening, setting you up for something summer, vacation and optional, contrasts with the content of the story itself, where a picture of the September battle of 1380 is recreated on several pages. “Starting, look at the turning point in Russian history, burdened with historiographic solemnity: “The truth of history is bitter, but it is easier to express it than hide it: not only the Circassians and Genoese were brought by Mamai, not only the Lithuanians were in alliance with him, but also the Prince of Ryazan Oleg.<...>For this, the Russians crossed the Don, in order to protect their backs with the Don from their own, from the Ryazan people: they would not hit, the Orthodox. The contradictions lurking in the soul of one person are also characteristic of the nation as a whole: “Was it not from here that the fate of Russia was led? Isn't there a turning point in her story here? Is it always only through Smolensk and Kyiv that enemies swarmed at us?..” Thus, from the inconsistency of the national consciousness, Solzhenitsyn takes a step towards the study of the inconsistency of national life, which led much later to other turns in Russian history.

But if the narrator can pose such questions and comprehend them, then the main character of the story, the self-appointed watchman of the Kulikovo field Zakhar-Kalita, simply embodies an almost instinctive desire to preserve the historical memory that was lost. There is no sense in his constant, day and night stay on the field, but the very fact of the existence of a funny eccentric person is significant for Solzhenitsyn. Before describing it, he seems to stop in bewilderment and even strays into sentimental, almost Karamzin intonations, begins the phrase with such a characteristic interjection “ah”, and ends with question and exclamation marks.

On the one hand, the Superintendent of the Kulikovo Field with his senseless activities is ridiculous, how ridiculous his intentions are to reach Furtseva, the then Minister of Culture, in search of his own, only known truth. The narrator cannot help laughing, comparing him with a dead warrior, next to whom, however, there is neither a sword nor a shield, but instead of a helmet, a cap worn out and near his arm a bag with selected bottles. On the other hand, the completely disinterested and senseless, it would seem, devotion to Paul as the visible embodiment of Russian history makes us see something real in this figure - sorrow. The author's position is not clear - Solzhenitsyn, as it were, is balancing on the verge of the comic and the serious, seeing one of the bizarre and extraordinary forms of the Russian national character. Comic for all the senselessness of his life on the Field (the heroes even have a suspicion that in this way Zakhar-Kalita shirks hard rural work) is a claim to seriousness and his own importance, his complaints that he, the field's caretaker, is not given weapons. And next to this - it’s not at all the comic passion of the hero, using the means available to him, to testify to the historical glory of Russian weapons. And then “everything that mocking and condescending thing that we thought about him yesterday immediately fell away. On this frosty morning, rising from the shock, he was no longer the Overseer, but, as it were, the Spirit of this Field, guarding, never leaving him.

Of course, the distance between the narrator and the hero is enormous: the hero does not have access to the historical material with which the narrator freely operates, they belong to different cultural and social environments, but they are brought together by a true devotion to national history and culture, belonging to which makes it possible to overcome social and cultural differences.

Turning to the folk character in the stories published in the first half of the 60s, Solzhenitsyn offers literature a new concept of personality. His heroes, such as Matryona, Ivan Denisovich (the image of the janitor Spiridon from the novel “In the First Circle” also gravitates towards them), are people who do not reflect, they live by some natural, as if given from the outside, in advance and not developed by them ideas. And, following these ideas, it is important to survive physically in conditions that are not at all conducive to physical survival, but not at the cost of losing one's own human dignity. To lose it means to perish, i.e., having physically survived, to cease to be a person, to lose not only the respect of others, but also respect for oneself, which is tantamount to death. Explaining this, relatively speaking, ethics of survival, Shukhov recalls the words of his first brigadier Kuzemin: “Here’s who dies in the camp: who licks bowls, who hopes for the medical unit, and who goes to knock on a godfather.”

With the image of Ivan Denisovich, a new ethics, as it were, came into literature, forged in the camps through which a very large part of society passed. (Many pages of The Gulag Archipelago will be devoted to the study of this ethics.) Shukhov, not wanting to lose his human dignity, is not at all inclined to take all the blows of camp life - otherwise he simply cannot survive. “That's right, groan and rot,” he remarks. “And if you resist, you will break.” In this sense, the writer denies the generally accepted romantic ideas about the proud confrontation of personality tragic circumstances on which literature brought up the generation of Soviet people of the 30s. And in this sense, the opposition of Shukhov and the captain Buinovsky, the hero who takes the blow, is interesting, but often, as it seems to Ivan Denisovich, it is senseless and destructive for himself. The protests of the captain rank against the morning search in the cold of people who had just woken up after getting up, shivering from the cold, are naive:

“Buinovsky - in the throat, he got used to his destroyers, but there are no three months in the camp:

You have no right to undress people in the cold! You don't know the ninth article of the criminal code!..

Have. They know. You, brother, don't know yet."

The purely folk, peasant practicality of Ivan Denisovich helps him survive and preserve himself as a man - without setting himself eternal questions, without trying to generalize the experience of his military and camp life, where he ended up after captivity (neither the investigator who interrogated Shukhov, nor he himself were able to figure out what kind of task of German intelligence he was performing). He, of course, cannot reach the level of historical-philosophical generalization of the camp experience as a facet of the national-historical existence of the 20th century, which Solzhenitsyn himself will rise to in The Gulag Archipelago.

In the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, Solzhenitsyn faces the creative task of combining two points of view - the author and the hero, points of view that are not opposite, but ideologically similar, but differ in the level of generalization and breadth of material. This task is solved almost exclusively by stylistic means, when there is a slightly noticeable gap between the speech of the author and the character, either increasing or practically disappearing.

Solzhenitsyn refers to the tale style of narration, which gives Ivan Denisovich the opportunity for verbal self-realization, but this is not a direct tale that reproduces the hero’s speech, but introduces the image of the narrator, whose position is close to that of the hero. Such a narrative form made it possible at some moments to distance the author and the hero, to make a direct conclusion of the narration from the “author's Shukhov's” into the “author's Solzhenitsyn's” speech... By shifting the boundaries of Shukhov's sense of life, the author received the right to see what his hero could not see , something that is beyond Shukhov's competence, while the ratio of the author's speech plan to the plan of the hero can be shifted in the opposite direction - their points of view and their stylistic masks will immediately coincide. Thus, “the syntactic and stylistic structure of the story has developed as a result of a peculiar use of adjacent possibilities of a tale, shifts from improperly direct to improperly authorial speech,” which are equally focused on the colloquial features of the Russian language.

Both the hero and the narrator (here is the obvious basis for their unity, expressed in the speech element of the work) have access to that specifically Russian view of reality, which is usually called folk. It is precisely the experience of a purely "muzhik" perception of the camp as one of the aspects of Russian life in the 20th century. and paved the way for the story to the reader of the "New World" and the whole country. Solzhenitsyn himself recalled this in The Calf:

“I won’t say that such an exact plan, but I had a sure hunch-premonition: this peasant Ivan Denisovich cannot remain indifferent to the upper peasant Alexander Tvardovsky and the riding peasant Nikita Khrushchev. And so it came true: not even poetry, not even politics, decided the fate of my story, but this is his ultimate peasant essence, so much ridiculed, trampled and cursed with us since the Great Break, and even earlier” (p. 27).

In the stories published at that time, Solzhenitsyn did not approach one of the most important topics for him - the topic of resistance to the anti-people regime. It will become one of the most important in the Gulag Archipelago. So far, the writer was interested in the folk character itself and its existence “in the very interior of Russia - if there was such a place, she lived”, in that very Russia that the narrator is looking for in the story “Matryona Dvor”. Ho, he finds untouched by the turmoil of the 20th century. an island of natural Russian life, but a folk character that managed to preserve itself in this turmoil. “There are such born angels,” the writer wrote in the article “Repentance and Self-Restriction”, as if characterizing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, not drowning in it at all, even touching its surface with their feet? Each of us met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, they are the righteous, we saw them, were surprised (“eccentrics”), used their good, in good moments answered them the same, they dispose, - and immediately sank again to our doomed depth” (Publicism, vol. 1, p. 61). What is the essence of Matrona's righteousness? In life, not by lies, we will now say in the words of the writer himself, uttered much later. She is outside the sphere of the heroic or exceptional, she realizes herself in the most ordinary, everyday situation, she experiences all the “charms” of the Soviet rural novelty of the 50s: having worked all her life, she is forced to bother about a pension not for herself, but for husband, missing since the beginning of the war, measuring kilometers on foot and bowing to office tables. Not being able to buy peat, which is mined everywhere around, but not sold to collective farmers, she, like all her friends, is forced to take it secretly. Creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most ordinary circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 1950s. with its lack of rights and arrogant disregard for an ordinary, unimportant person. The righteousness of Matrena lies in her ability to preserve her humanness even in such inaccessible conditions for this.

But who does Matryona oppose, in other words, in a collision with what forces does her essence manifest itself? In a collision with Thaddeus, a black old man who appeared before the narrator, the school teacher and Matryona's tenant, on the threshold of her hut, when he came with a humiliated request for his grandson? He crossed this threshold forty years ago, with fury in his heart and with an ax in his hands - his bride from the war did not wait, she married her brother. “I stood on the threshold,” says Matryona. - I'll scream! I would throw myself at his knees! It’s impossible ... Well, he says, if it weren’t for my brother, I would chop you both!”

According to some researchers, the story "Matryona's Dvor" is latently mystical.

Already at the very end of the story, after the death of Matryona, Solzhenitsyn lists her quiet virtues:

“Not understood and abandoned even by her husband, who buried six children, but did not like her sociable, a stranger to her sisters, sister-in-law, funny, stupidly working for others for free - she did not accumulate property to death. Dirty white goat, rickety cat, ficuses...

We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the same ethnographer, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not exist.

Neither city.

Not all our land."

And the dramatic finale of the story (Matryona dies under a train, helping to transport Thaddeus the logs of her own hut) gives the ending a very special, symbolic meaning: she is no more, therefore, the village cannot exist without her? And the city? And all our land?

In 1995-1999 Solzhenitsyn published new stories, which he called "two-part". Their most important compositional principle is the opposition of two parts, which makes it possible to compare two human destinies and characters that manifested themselves differently in the general context of historical circumstances. Their heroes - and people who seem to have sunk into the abyss of Russian history and left a bright mark in it, such as, for example, Marshal G.K. Zhukov - are considered by the writer from a purely personal side, regardless of official regalia, if any are available. The problematic of these stories is formed by the conflict between history and a private person. The ways of resolving this conflict, no matter how different they may seem, always lead to the same result: a person who has lost faith and is disoriented in historical space, a person who does not know how to sacrifice himself and compromises, is crushed and crushed by the terrible era in which he live.

Pavel Vasilievich Ektov is a rural intellectual who saw the meaning of his life in serving the people, confident that “everyday assistance to the peasant in his current urgent needs, alleviation of the people’s need in any real form does not require any justification.” During the Civil War, Ektov did not see for himself, a populist and a people-lover, any other way out but to join the peasant insurrectionary movement led by Ataman Antonov. Most educated person among Antonov's associates, Ektov became his chief of staff. Solzhenitsyn shows a tragic zigzag in the fate of this generous and honest man, who inherited from the Russian intelligentsia an inescapable moral need to serve the people, to share the peasant's pain. But issued by the same peasants (“on the second night he was extradited to the Chekists at the denunciation of a neighbor woman”), Ektov is broken by blackmail: he cannot find the strength to sacrifice his wife and daughter and commits a terrible crime, in fact, “surrendering” all the Antonov headquarters - those people to whom he himself came to share their pain, with whom he needed to be in hard times, so as not to hide in his mink in Tambov and not to despise himself! Solzhenitsyn shows the fate of a crushed man who finds himself in front of an insoluble life equation and is not ready to solve it. He can put his life on the altar, but the life of his daughter and wife?.. Is it even possible for a person to do such a thing? "The Bolsheviks used a great lever: to take families hostage."

The conditions are such that the virtuous qualities of a person turn against him. A bloody civil war squeezes a private person between two millstones, grinding his life, his fate, his family, his moral convictions.

“Sacrifice his wife and Marinka (daughter. - M.G.), step over them - how could he ??

For whom else in the world - or for what else in the world? - is he more responsible than for them?

Yes, all the fullness of life - and they were.

And most - to hand over them? Who can?!”

The situation appears to the ego as hopeless. The non-religious and humanistic tradition, dating back to the Renaissance and directly denied by Solzhenitsyn in his Harvard speech, prevents a person from feeling his responsibility more than for his family. “In the story “Ego,” the modern researcher P. Spivakovsky believes, “it is precisely shown how the non-religious and humanistic consciousness of the protagonist turns out to be a source of betrayal.” The hero's inattention to the sermons of rural priests is very feature worldview of the Russian intellectual, to which Solzhenitsyn, as if in passing, draws attention. After all, Ektov is a supporter of “real”, material, practical activity, but focusing only on it alone, alas, leads to oblivion of the spiritual meaning of life. Perhaps the church sermon, which the Ego arrogantly refuses, could be the source of “that very real help, without which the hero falls into the trap of his own worldview”, that very humanistic, non-religious one, which does not allow the individual to feel his responsibility before God, but his own fate - as part of God's providence.

A man in the face of inhuman circumstances, changed, crushed by them, unable to refuse compromise and deprived of a Christian worldview, defenseless in the face of the conditions of a forced bargain (can the Ego be judged for this?) is another typical situation in our history.

Ego was compromised by two features of the Russian intellectual: belonging to a non-religious humanism and following the revolutionary democratic tradition. But, paradoxically, the writer saw similar collisions in Zhukov's life (the story "On the Edge", a two-part composition paired with "Ego"). The connection between his fate and the fate of Ego is amazing - both fought on the same front, only on different sides of it: Zhukov - on the side of the Reds, Ego - the rebellious peasants. And Zhukov was wounded in this war with his own people, but, unlike the idealist Ego, he survived. In his history, full of ups and downs, in victories over the Germans and in painful defeats in apparatus games with Khrushchev, in the betrayal of people whom he once saved (Khrushchev - twice, Konev from the Stalinist tribunal in 1941), in the fearlessness of youth, Solzhenitsyn is trying to find the key to understanding this fate, the fate of the marshal, one of those Russian soldiers who, according to I. Brodsky, “boldly entered foreign capitals, / but returned in fear to their own” (“ On the death of Zhukov”, 1974). In the ups and downs, he sees a weakness behind the marshal's iron will, which manifested itself in a completely human tendency to compromise. And here is the continuation of the most important theme of Solzhenitsyn's work, begun in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and culminating in The Gulag Archipelago: this theme is connected with the study of the boundary of compromise, which a person who wants not to lose himself must know. Crushed by heart attacks and strokes, senile infirmity, Zhukov appears at the end of the story - but this is not his trouble, but in another compromise (he inserted two or three phrases into the book of memoirs about the role of political instructor Brezhnev in the victory), which he went to see his own book published. Compromise and indecision in the turning periods of life, the very fear that he experienced when returning to his capital, broke and finished off the marshal - differently than Ego, but in essence the same. The ego is helpless to change anything, when it betrays terribly and cruelly, Zhukov, too, can only helplessly look back at the edge of life: “Maybe even then, even then - it was necessary to decide? Oh, it seems - a fool, a fool? praying for his idol Tukhachevsky, he participated in the destruction of the world of the Russian village that gave birth to him, when the peasants were smoked out of the forests with gases, and the “probanditized” villages were burned completely.

The stories about Ektov and Zhukov are addressed to the fates of subjectively honest people, broken by the terrible historical circumstances of the Soviet era. Ho, another variant of compromise with reality is also possible - complete and joyful submission to it and the natural oblivion of any pangs of conscience. About this story "Apricot jam". The first part of this story is a terrible letter addressed to a living classic Soviet literature. It is written by a semi-literate person who is quite clearly aware of the hopelessness of the Soviet life vice, from which he, the son of dispossessed parents, will no longer get out, having disappeared in labor camps:

“I am a slave in extreme circumstances, and such a life has set me up to the last insult. Maybe it will be inexpensive for you to send me a grocery parcel? Have mercy...”

The food package contains, perhaps, the salvation of this man, Fyodor Ivanovich, who has become just a unit of the forced Soviet labor army, a unit whose life has no significant value at all. The second part of the story is a description of the life of a beautiful cottage famous writer, rich, warmed and caressed at the very top, - a man happy from a successfully found compromise with the authorities, joyfully lying both in journalism and in literature. The Writer and the Critic, who carry on literary official conversations over tea, are in a different world than the entire Soviet country. The voice of the letter with the words of truth that has flown into this world of rich writers' dachas cannot be heard by representatives of the literary elite: deafness is one of the conditions for a compromise with the authorities. The rapture of the Writer about the fact that “from the depths of modern readers emerges a letter with a primordial language is the height of cynicism.<...>what a self-willed, and at the same time captivating combination and control of words! Enviable and writer!” A letter that appeals to the conscience of a Russian writer (according to Solzhenitsyn, the hero of his story is not a Russian, but a Soviet writer), becomes only material for the study of non-standard speech turns that help stylization folk speech, which is comprehended as exotic and to be reproduced by the "folk" Writer, as if knowing the national life from the inside. The highest degree of disdain for the cry of a tortured person in the letter is visible in the writer's remark, when he is asked about the connection with the correspondent: “Yes, what to answer, the answer is not the point. It's a matter of language."

With this article, we open a series of articles dedicated to the Nobel Prize winners from Russia in the field of literature. We are interested in the question - for what, why and by what criteria are issued this award, as well as why this award is not given to people who deserve it with their talent and achievements, for example, Leo Tolstoy and Dmitry Mendeleev.

Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature from our country in different years steel: I. Bunin, B. Pasternak, M. Sholokhov, A. Solzhenitsyn, I. Brodsky. At the same time, it should be noted that, with the exception of M. Sholokhov, all the rest were emigrants and dissidents.

In this article, we will talk about the 1970 Nobel Prize winner writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

WHO IS ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is known to the reader for his works “In the First Circle”, “Gulag Archipelago”, “Cancer Ward”, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and others.

And this writer appeared on our heads, thanks to Khrushchev, for whom Solzhenitsyn (even the word “lie” is present in the surname itself) became another tool for cracking down on the Stalinist past, and no more.

The pioneer of the “artistic” lies about Stalin (with the personal support of Khrushchev) was the former camp informer Solzhenitsyn, elevated to the rank of Nobel laureate in literature (see the article “Vetrov, aka Solzhenitsyn” in the Military History Journal, 1990, No. 12 , p. 77), whose books were published in mass editions during the period of “perestroika” at the direction of the treacherous leadership of the country in order to destroy the USSR.

Here is what Khrushchev himself writes in his memoirs:

I am proud that at one time I supported one of Solzhenitsyn's first works... I don't remember Solzhenitsyn's biography. I was told earlier that he spent a long time in the camps. In the mentioned story, he proceeded from his own observations. I read it. It leaves a heavy impression, exciting, but true. And most importantly, it causes disgust for what was happening under Stalin .... Stalin was a criminal, and criminals must be condemned at least morally. The strongest judgment is to brand them in a work of art. Why, on the contrary, was Solzhenitsyn considered a criminal?

Why? Because the anti-Soviet graphomaniac Solzhenitsyn turned out to be a rare find for the West, who was rushed in 1970 (even though given year was not chosen by chance - the year of the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin, as another attack on the USSR) to undeservedly award the Nobel Prize in Literature to the author of "Ivan Denisovich" is an unprecedented fact. As Alexander Shabalov writes in Comrade Stalin's Eleventh Strike, Solzhenitsyn begged for the Nobel Prize, stating:

I need this award as a step in a position, in a battle! And the faster I get it, the harder I will become, the harder I will hit!

And, indeed, the name of Solzhenitsyn became the banner of the dissident movement in the USSR, which at one time played a huge negative role in the elimination of the Soviet socialist system. And most of his opuses first saw the light "over the hill" with the support of Radio Liberty, the Russian department of the BBC, the Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, the Russian department of the State Department, the Pentagon's agitation and propaganda department, and the information department of the British MI.

And having done his dirty deed, he was sent back to Russia destroyed by the liberals. Because even enemies do not need such traitors. Where he grumbled with the air of a "prophet" on Russian television with his "dissenting" opinion of the mafia Yeltsin regime, which no longer interested anyone and could change absolutely nothing.

Let us consider in more detail the biography, creativity, ideological views writer A. Solzhenitsyn.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, into a Cossack family. Father, Isaakiy (that is, in fact, his patronymic is Isaakovich, that is, he lied to everyone, saying everywhere, including in writing, that he was Isaevich) Semenovich, died on a hunt six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from a family of a wealthy landowner.

In 1939, Solzhenitsyn entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (some sources indicate literary courses at Moscow State University). In 1941 Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University (entered in 1936).

In October 1941 he was drafted into the army, and in 1942, after studying at the artillery school in Kostroma, he was sent to the front as the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd class and the Order of the Red Star.

The book written by Solzhenitsyn's first wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya, published in the Soviet Union, contains funny things: it turns out that in 1944-1945, Solzhenitsyn, being a Soviet officer, composed plans for the elimination of Stalin.

At the same time, he wrote his directives in letters and sent them to his friends. So he wrote directly - “Directive number one”, etc., and this is obvious madness, because then there was military censorship and every letter was stamped “Checked by military censorship”. For such letters then, in wartime, they were guaranteed to be arrested, and therefore only a half-mad person, or a person who hopes that the letter will be read and sent from the front to the rear, could do such things. And these are not simple words.

The fact is that among the artillery batteries during the Great Patriotic War there were also batteries of instrumental reconnaissance - sound measurements, on one of which Solzhenitsyn served. This was the most reliable means of detecting enemy firing batteries. Sound meters deployed a system of microphones on the ground that received an acoustic wave from a shot, the signal was recorded and calculated, on the basis of which they received the coordinates of the enemy’s firing batteries even in a battlefield that was fairly saturated with artillery. This made it possible, with a good organization of command and control, to begin to suppress enemy batteries with their artillery fire after one or three volleys of the enemy.

Therefore, sound meters were valued, and in order to ensure the safety of their combat work, they were deployed in the near rear, and not on the front lines, and even more so not in the first line of trenches. They were placed so that they did not end up near objects that could be subjected to enemy air raids and shelling. During the retreat, they were among the first to be taken out of the battle area; during the offensive, they followed the troops of the first line. Those. doing their important work, they directly came into contact with the enemy in a combat situation only in some emergency cases, and to counter it they had only small arms - carbines and personal weapons of officers.

However, A.I. Solzhenitsyn was "lucky": the Germans hit him, the front rolled back, command and control of the troops was lost for some time - an opportunity presented itself to show heroism. But it was not he who showed heroism, but the foreman of the battery, who saved it by leading it to the rear. War is paradoxical. If we talk specifically about the sound-measuring battery, then the actions of the foreman were correct: he saved equipment and qualified personnel from useless death in battle, for which the sound-measuring battery was not intended. Why didn’t its commander Solzhenitsyn, who appeared at the location of the battery later, do this, is an open question: “the war wrote off” (it was not up to such trifles).

But this episode was enough for A.I. Solzhenitsyn: he realized that in the war for socialism alien to him (he himself came from a clan of not the last rich people in Russia, although not from the main branch: uncle on the eve of World War I owned one of the nine Rolls - Royces" that existed in the empire) can be killed, and then the "idea fix" - a dream from childhood: to enter the history of world literature as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy of the 20th century, will not come true. So A.I. Solzhenitsyn fled from the front to the Gulag in order to be guaranteed to survive. And the fact that he laid a friend down is trifles against the background of salvation precious life future "great writer". On February 9, 1945, he was arrested and on July 27 was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps.

Natalya Reshetovskaya further describes Solzhenitsyn's arrest, where she was interrogated as a witness and other people were also interrogated. One of the witnesses, a sailor, a young midshipman, testified that Solzhenitsyn met him by chance on the train and immediately began to engage in anti-Stalinist agitation. To the question of the investigator - “why didn’t you immediately report it?” The midshipman replied that he immediately realized that he was in front of a madman. That's why he didn't deliver.

He stayed in the camps from 1945 to 1953: in New Jerusalem near Moscow; in the so-called "sharashka" - a secret research institute in the village of Marfino near Moscow; in 1950 - 1953 he was imprisoned in one of the Kazakh camps.

In February 1953 he was released without the right to reside in the European part of the USSR and sent to the "eternal settlement" (1953 - 1956); lived in the village of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region (Kazakhstan).

On February 3, 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated and moved to Ryazan. Worked as a mathematics teacher.

In 1962, in the journal Novy Mir, by special permission of N.S. Khrushchev (!!!, which says a lot), the first story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published - “One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” (reworked at the request of the editorial story “ Shch-854. One day for one convict). The story was nominated for the Lenin Prize, which caused active resistance from the communist authorities.

In 1964, the ideological inspirer and patron of A. Solzhenitsyn, Nikita Khrushchev, was removed from power, after which Solzhenitsyn's "star" in the USSR began to fade.

In September 1965, the so-called archive of Solzhenitsyn fell into the State Security Committee (KGB) and, by order of the authorities, further publication of his works in the USSR was discontinued: already published works were withdrawn from libraries, and new books began to be published through the channels of "samizdat" and abroad .

In November 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not let him back to the USSR. In 1974, after the publication of the book “The Gulag Archipelago” in Paris (in the USSR, one of the manuscripts was confiscated by the KGB in September 1973, and in December 1973 a publication took place in Paris, which leads to interesting thoughts, given the fact that the head of the KGB at that time was Yu.V. Andropov, about whom we wrote in this article - http://inance.ru/2015/06/andropov/), the dissident writer was arrested. On February 12, 1974, a trial took place: Alexander Solzhenitsyn was found guilty of high treason, deprived of citizenship and sentenced to expulsion from the USSR the next day.

From 1974 Solzhenitsyn lived in Germany, in Switzerland (Zurich), from 1976 - in the USA (near the city of Cavendish, Vermont). Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a "Vermont recluse." He criticized both the Soviet order and American reality. During 20 years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, he published a large number of works.

In the USSR, Solzhenitsyn's works began to be published only from the end of the 1980s. In 1989, in the same Novy Mir magazine, where One Day ... was published, the first official publication of excerpts from the novel The Gulag Archipelago took place. On August 16, 1990, by decree of the President of the USSR, the Soviet citizenship of Alexander Isaevich (?) Solzhenitsyn was restored. In 1990, for the book The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the State Prize (of course, presented by liberals who hate Soviet power). May 27, 1994 the writer returned to Russia. In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation.

WHO ARE YOU, ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN - A "GREAT WRITER" OR A "GREAT TRAITOR" OF OUR MOTHERLAND?

The name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn has always caused a lot of heated debate and discussion. Some call and called him a great Russian writer and active social activist, others - a fraudster historical facts and detractor of the Motherland. However, the truth is probably somewhere. The casket opens very simply: Khrushchev needed a hack who, without a twinge of conscience, could denigrate the successes that were achieved during the reign of Joseph Stalin. And it turned out to be Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

For almost 20 years, Russian liberal ministers and officials openly called Solzhenitsyn a great Russian writer. And even for decency, he never once objected to this. Equally, he did not protest against the titles "Leo Tolstoy of the 20th century" and "Dostoevsky of the 20th century." Alexander Isaevich modestly called himself "Antilenin".

True, the true title of "great writer" in Russia was given only by Time. And, apparently, Time has already pronounced its verdict. It is curious that the life of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov is well known to literary critics and historians. And if they argue about something, then on some points.

The reader can easily find out why, when and how our writers were subjected to government repressions. When and in what editions were their books published? What was the real success (marketability) of these books. What authors received royalties. With what funds, for example, Chekhov bought the Melikhovo estate. Well, Solzhenitsyn's life is scandals, shocking, triumphs and a sea of ​​white spots, and it is precisely at the most turning points in his biography.

But in 1974 Solzhenitsyn ended up not just anywhere, but in Switzerland, and right there in April 1976 - in the USA. Well, in the "free world" you can not hide from the public and journalists. But even there Solzhenitsyn's life is known only in fragments. For example, in the summer of 1974, for fees from the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn created the Russian Public Fund for Assistance to the Persecuted and Their Families to help political prisoners in the USSR (parcels and money transfers to places of detention, legal and illegal material assistance to the families of prisoners ).

"Archipelago" was published with a circulation of 50,000 copies. The Soviet media at the time made jokes about the illiquid deposits of Solzhenitsyn's books in bookstores in the West. One of the secrets of Solzhenitsyn and the CIA is the ratio of sold to the number of destroyed copies of Solzhenitsyn's books.

Well, okay, let's say that all 50 thousand were sold. But what was the fee? Unknown.

It is curious that in the United States at the end of the twentieth century they came up with an analogue of the Soviet "Union of Writers" with its literary fund. That is, the writer teaches somewhere - at universities or in some training centers for novice writers. Thus, there is a “feeding” of those who write works pleasing to Western states and business.

But Solzhenitsyn, unlike Yevtushenko and many others, did not teach anywhere. However, in 1976 he purchased an expensive 50-acre(!) estate in Vermont. Together with the estate, a large wooden house with furniture and other equipment. Nearby, Solzhenitsyn is building a large three-story house “for work” and a number of other buildings.

Solzhenitsyn's sons study in expensive private schools. Alexander Isaakovich (we will now call him correctly) maintains a large staff of servants (!) And security guards. Naturally, their number and payment are unknown, if not classified. However, some eyewitnesses saw two karate champions on duty around the clock in his apartment in Switzerland.

But maybe rich Russian emigrants helped Solzhenitsyn? Not! On the contrary, he helps everyone himself, establishes foundations, maintains newspapers, such as Our Country in Buenos Aires.

"Where's the money, Zin?"

Oh! Nobel Prize! And here again the “top secret”: I received the award, but how much and where did it go?

The Nobel Prize in 1970 was awarded to A. Solzhenitsyn - "For the moral strength gleaned from the tradition of great Russian literature" which he was awarded in 1974.

For comparison, Mikhail Sholokhov, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, received 62 thousand dollars in 1965 (while it is known what he spent on the arrangement of his native village of Vyoshenskaya). This is not even enough to buy an estate and build a house. And Alexander Isaakovich did not seem to be engaged in business. So our "new Tolstoy" lived without Yasnaya Polyana and Mikhailovsky, but much richer than Lev Nikolaevich and Alexander Sergeevich. So who kept "our" "great writer"?

ANTIPATRIOTISM OF SOLZHENITSYN

In May 1974 Solzhenitsyn said:

I will go to the USA, I will speak in the Senate, I will talk with the president, I want to destroy Fulbright and all senators who intend to make agreements with the communists. I must get the Americans to increase their pressure in Vietnam.

And now Solzhenitsyn proposes to "increase the pressure." Kill a couple more million Vietnamese or unleash a thermonuclear war? Let's not forget that over 60,000 Soviet military personnel and several hundred civilian specialists fought in Vietnam.

And Alexander Isaakovich shouted: “Come on! Let's!"

By the way, he several times urged the States to destroy communism with the help of nuclear war. Solzhenitsyn publicly stated:

The course of history has placed the leadership of the world on the United States.

Solzhenitsyn congratulated General Pinochet, who carried out a coup d'état in Chile and killed thousands of people without trial or investigation in stadiums in Santiago. Alexander Isaakovich sincerely mourned the death of the fascist dictator Franco and urged the new Spanish authorities not to rush to democratize the country.

Solzhenitsyn angrily denounced American presidents Nixon and Ford for indulging and making concessions to the USSR. They de "do not interfere actively enough in the internal affairs of the USSR", and that "the Soviet people are left to the mercy of fate."

Intervene, Solzhenitsyn urged. Intervene again and again as much as you can.

In 1990 (by the new liberal authorities) Solzhenitsyn was restored to Soviet citizenship with the subsequent termination of the criminal case, and in December of the same year he was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR for the Gulag Archipelago. According to the story of the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Kostikov, during the first official visit of B. N. Yeltsin to the United States in 1992, immediately upon arrival in Washington, Boris Nikolayevich called Solzhenitsyn from the hotel and had a “long” conversation with him, in particular, about the Kuril Islands.

As Kostikov testified, the writer's opinion turned out to be unexpected and shocking for many:

I have studied the entire history of the islands since the 12th century. These are not our islands, Boris Nikolaevich. Need to give. But expensive...

But perhaps Solzhenitsyn's interlocutors and journalists misquoted or misunderstood our great patriot? Alas, returning to Russia, Solzhenitsyn did not renounce any of the words he had previously said. So, he wrote in the "Archipelago" and other places about 60 million prisoners in the Gulag, then about 100 million. But when he arrived, he could learn from various declassified sources that from 1918 to 1990, 3.7 million people were repressed in Soviet Russia for political reasons. The dissident Zhores Medvedev, who wrote about 40 million prisoners, publicly acknowledged the mistake and apologized, but Solzhenitsyn did not.

The writer, like any citizen, has the right to oppose the existing government. You can hate Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Putin, but at the same time not go over to the side of Russia's enemies. Pushkin wrote insulting poems about Alexander I and was exiled. Dostoevsky participated in an anti-government conspiracy and went to hard labor. But in 1831, Alexander Sergeevich, without hesitation, wrote "Slanderers of Russia", and Fyodor Mikhailovich on the eve of the war of 1877 wrote an article "And once again that Constantinople is sooner or later, but should be ours." None of them betrayed their country.

And now in schools, portraits of Solzhenitsyn are hung between portraits of Pushkin and Dostoevsky. Shouldn't we go even further and hang portraits of Grishka Otrepyev, Hetman Mazepa and General Vlasov in the classrooms (A. Solzhenitsyn considered the latter a hero)?

End of article here:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is an outstanding Russian writer, essayist, historian, poet and public figure.

He became widely known, in addition to literary works (as a rule, affecting acute socio-political topics), as well as historical and journalistic works about the history of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries.

Former dissident, for several decades (sixties, seventies and eighties of the XX century) actively fought against the communist regime in Russia.

The first years Solzhenitsyn lived in Kislovodsk, in 1924 he moved with his mother to Rostov-on-Don.

Already in his youth, Solzhenitsyn realized himself as a writer.

In 1937, he conceived a historical novel about the beginning of the First World War and began to collect materials for its creation. Later, this idea was embodied in "August the Fourteenth": the first part ("knot") of the historical narrative "Red Wheel".

In 1941, Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University. Even earlier, in 1939, he entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and Art. The war prevented him from graduating from college. After training at the artillery school in Kostroma in 1942, he was sent to the front and was appointed commander of a sound reconnaissance battery.
Solzhenitsyn went through the battle path from Orel to East Prussia, received the rank of captain, and was awarded orders. At the end of January 1945, he led the battery out of encirclement.

On February 9, 1945, Solzhenitsyn was arrested: military censorship drew attention to his correspondence with his friend Nikolai Vitkevich. The letters contained sharp assessments of Stalin and the orders he had established, spoke of the deceitfulness of modern Soviet literature. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years in the camps and eternal exile. He served his term in New Jerusalem near Moscow, then on the construction of a residential building in Moscow. Then - in a "sharashka" (a secret research institute where prisoners worked) in the village of Marfino near Moscow. He spent 1950-1953 in the camp (in Kazakhstan), was at the general camp work.

After the end of his term of imprisonment (February 1953), Solzhenitsyn was sent into indefinite exile. He began to teach mathematics in the district center of Kok-Terek, Dzhambul region of Kazakhstan. On February 3, 1956, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union released Solzhenitsyn from exile, and a year later he and Vitkevich were declared completely innocent: criticism of Stalin and literary works was recognized as fair and not contrary to socialist ideology.

In 1956, Solzhenitsyn moved to Russia - to a small village in the Ryazan region, where he worked as a teacher. A year later he moved to Ryazan.

Even in the camp, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with cancer, and on February 12, 1952, he underwent an operation. During his exile, Solzhenitsyn was treated twice at the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary, using various medicinal plants. Contrary to the expectations of doctors, the malignant tumor disappeared. In his healing, the recent prisoner saw a manifestation of Divine will - a command to tell the world about Soviet prisons and camps, to reveal the truth to those who do not know anything about it or do not want to know.

Solzhenitsyn wrote the first surviving works in the camp. These are poems and a satirical play "The Feast of the Victors".

In the winter of 1950-1951, Solzhenitsyn conceived a story about a prisoner's day. In 1959, the story "Sch-854" (One Day of a Prisoner) was written. Sch-854 is the camp number of the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a prisoner (convict) in a Soviet concentration camp.

In the autumn of 1961, I got acquainted with the story Chief Editor magazine "New World" A.T. Tvardovsky. Tvardovsky received permission to publish the story personally from the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union N.S. Khrushchev. "Sch-854" under a changed title - "One day of Ivan Denisovich" - was published in No. 11 of the magazine "New World" for 1962. For the sake of publishing the story, Solzhenitsyn was forced to soften some details of the life of prisoners. The original text of the story was first published by the Parisian publishing house "Ymca press" in 1973. But Solzhenitsyn retained the title "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich".

The publication of the story was a historic event. Solzhenitsyn became known throughout the country.

For the first time, the undisguised truth was told about the camp world. There were publications that claimed that the writer was exaggerating. But the enthusiastic perception of the story prevailed. For a short time, Solzhenitsyn was officially recognized.

In 1964, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was nominated for the Lenin Prize. But Solzhenitsyn did not receive the Lenin Prize.

A few months after "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," Solzhenitsyn's story "Matryona's Dvor" was published in No. 1 of Novy Mir for 1963. Initially, the story "Matryona's Dvor" was called "A village does not stand without a righteous man" - according to a Russian proverb dating back to the biblical Book of Genesis. The name "Matrenin Dvor" belongs to Tvardovsky. Like "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", this work was autobiographical and based on real events from the life of people known to the author. The prototype of the main character is the Vladimir peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova, with whom the writer lived, the narration, as in a number of Solzhenitsyn's later stories, is told in the first person, on behalf of the teacher Ignatich (patronymic is consonant with the author's - Isaevich), who moves to European Russia from far links.

In 1963-1966, Novy Mir published three more stories for Solzhenitsyn: "The Incident at the Krechetovka Station" (No. 1 for 1963, the author's title - "The Incident at the Kochetovka Station" - was changed at the urging of the "New World" and the conservative magazine "October", headed by the writer V.A. Kochetov), ​​"For the benefit of the cause" (No. 7 for 1963), "Zakhar-Kalita" (No. 1 for 1966). After 1966, the writer's works were not published in his homeland until the turn of 1989, when the Nobel lecture and chapters from the book The Gulag Archipelago were published in the journal Novy Mir.

In 1964, for the sake of publishing the novel in A.T. Tvardovsky's Novy Mir, Solzhenitsyn revised the novel, softening the criticism of Soviet reality. Instead of ninety-six written chapters, the text contained only eighty-seven. The original version was about an attempt by a high-ranking Soviet diplomat to prevent Stalin's agents from stealing the secret of atomic weapons from the United States. He is convinced that atomic bomb the Soviet dictatorial regime will be invincible and can conquer the as yet free countries of the West. For publication, the plot was changed: a Soviet doctor passed on to the West information about a wonderful medicine that the Soviet authorities kept in deep secrecy.

Censorship nevertheless banned the publication. Solzhenitsyn later restored the original text with minor changes.

In 1955, Solzhenitsyn conceived, and in 1963-1966 wrote the story "Cancer Ward". It reflects the author's impressions of his stay in the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary and the history of his healing. The time of action is limited to a few weeks, the scene of action is limited to the walls of the hospital (such a narrowing of time and space - distinguishing feature poetics of many works of Solzhenitsyn).

All attempts to print the story in the "New World" were unsuccessful. "Cancer Ward", like "In the First Circle", was distributed in "samizdat". The story was first published in the West in 1968.

In the mid-1960s, when an official ban was imposed on the discussion of the topic of repression, the authorities began to consider Solzhenitsyn as a dangerous opponent. In September 1965, one of the writer's friends, who kept his manuscripts, was searched. The Solzhenitsyn archive ended up in the State Security Committee. Since 1966, the writer's works have ceased to be printed, and those already published have been removed from libraries. The KGB spread rumors that during the war Solzhenitsyn surrendered and collaborated with the Germans. In March 1967, Solzhenitsyn addressed the Fourth Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers with a letter, where he spoke about the destructive power of censorship and the fate of his works. He demanded that the Writers' Union refute the slander and resolve the issue of publishing Cancer Ward.

The leadership of the Writers' Union did not respond to this call. Solzhenitsyn's opposition to power began. He writes journalistic articles that diverge in manuscripts. From now on, journalism has become for the writer the same significant part of his work as fiction. Solzhenitsyn distributes open letters protesting against the violation of human rights and the persecution of dissidents in the Soviet Union. In November 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize. The support of Western public opinion made it difficult for the authorities of the Soviet Union to crack down on the dissident writer.

Solzhenitsyn talks about his opposition to communist power in the book "The calf butted with the oak", first published in Paris in 1975.

Since 1958, Solzhenitsyn has been working on the book "The Gulag Archipelago" - a history of repressions, camps and prisons in the Soviet Union (Gulag - Main Directorate of Camps). The book was completed in 1968. In 1973, KGB officers seized one of the copies of the manuscript. The persecution of the writer intensified. At the end of December 1973, the first volume of the Archipelago was published in the West... (the book was published in its entirety in the West in 1973-1975).

On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and expelled from the Soviet Union to West Germany a day later. Immediately after the writer's arrest, his wife Natalya Dmitrievna distributed in "samizdat" his article "Live not by lies" - an appeal to citizens to refuse complicity in the lies that the authorities demand of them.

Solzhenitsyn and his family settled in the Swiss city of Zurich, in 1976 he moved to the small town of Cavendish in US state Vermont.

In exile, Solzhenitsyn is working on the epic "Red Wheel", dedicated to the pre-revolutionary years. The "Red Wheel" consists of four parts - "knots": "August the Fourteenth", "October the Sixteenth", "March the Seventeenth" and "April the Seventeenth". Solzhenitsyn began writing The Red Wheel in the late sixties and completed it only in the early nineties. "August the Fourteenth" and the chapters of "October the Sixteenth" were created back in the USSR.

Solzhenitsyn said that he would return to his homeland only when his books returned there, when The Gulag Archipelago was printed there. The Novy Mir magazine managed to obtain permission from the authorities to publish the chapters of this book in 1989.

In May 1994 Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He writes a book of memoirs "A grain fell between two millstones" ("New World", 1998, No. 9, 11, 1999, No. 2, 2001, No. 4), appears in newspapers and on television with assessments of the current policy of the Russian authorities. The writer accuses them of the fact that the transformations carried out in the country are ill-conceived, immoral and cause huge damage society, which caused an ambiguous attitude towards Solzhenitsyn's journalism.

In 1991, Solzhenitsyn wrote the book "How do we equip Russia." Powerful considerations. And in 1998, Solzhenitsyn published a book Russia in a collapse, in which he sharply criticizes economic reforms. He reflects on the need to revive the Zemstvo and the Russian national consciousness. The book "Two Hundred Years Together", devoted to the Jewish question in Russia, was published. In the "New World" the writer regularly appeared in the late nineties with literary critical articles on the work of Russian prose writers and poets.

In the nineties, Solzhenitsyn wrote several short stories and novellas: "Two stories" (Ego, On the Edge) ("New World", 1995, 3, 5), called "two-part" stories "Young", "Nastenka", "Apricot Jam" ( all - "New World", 1995, No. 10), "Zhelyabug settlements" ("New World", 1999, No. 3) and the story "Adlig Shvenkitten" ("New World", 1999, 3). The structural principle of "two-part stories" is the correlation of two halves of the text, which describe the fate of different characters, often involved in the same events, but not knowing about it. Solzhenitsyn addresses the theme of guilt, betrayal and responsibility of a person for his actions.

In 2001-2002, a two-volume monumental work "Two Hundred Years Together" was published, which the author devotes to the history of the Jewish people in Russia. The first part of the monograph covers the period from 1795 to 1916, the second - from 1916 to 1995.

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Alexander Solzhenitsyn the State Prize of the Russian Federation for humanitarian work.

On the night of August 3-4, 2008 Alexander Solzhenitsyn died in Moscow. According to his relatives, the cause of death was acute heart failure.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Childhood and youth

During the war

Arrest and imprisonment

Arrest and sentence

Rehabilitation

First publications

dissidence

Exile

Back in Russia

Death and burial

Family Children

Creation

Positive ratings

Awards and prizes

perpetuation of memory

On stage and screen

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn(December 11, 1918, Kislovodsk - August 3, 2008, Moscow) - Russian writer, playwright, essayist, poet, public and political figure who lived and worked in the USSR, Switzerland, the USA and Russia. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1970). A dissident who for several decades (1960s-1980s) actively opposed communist ideas, political system The USSR and the policies of its authorities.

In addition to artistic literary works, which, as a rule, touch upon acute socio-political issues, he became widely known for his historical and journalistic works on the history of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Alexander Isaevich (Isaakievich) Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk (now the Stavropol Territory). Baptized in the Kislovodsk church of the Holy Healer Panteleimon.

Father - Isaac Semyonovich Solzhenitsyn (1891-1918), a Russian peasant from the North Caucasus (the village of Sablinskaya in "August the Fourteenth"). Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak, a Ukrainian, the daughter of the owner of the richest economy in the Kuban, a Tauride shepherd-farm laborer who rose to this level with intelligence and work. Solzhenitsyn's parents met while studying in Moscow and soon got married. Isaaki Solzhenitsyn volunteered for the front during the First World War and was an officer. He died before the birth of his son, June 15, 1918, after demobilization as a result of a hunting accident. He is depicted under the name of Sani (Isaac) Lazhenitsyn in the epic "Red Wheel" (based on the memoirs of the writer's wife - mother).

As a result of the revolution and civil war, the family was ruined, and in 1924 Solzhenitsyn moved with his mother to Rostov-on-Don, from 1926 to 1936 he studied at school, living in poverty.

In the lower grades, he was ridiculed for wearing a baptismal cross and unwillingness to join the pioneers, was reprimanded for attending church. Under the influence of the school, he adopted the communist ideology, in 1936 he joined the Komsomol. In high school, he became interested in literature, began to write essays and poems; interested in history and social life. In 1937, he conceived a "great novel about the revolution" of 1917.

In 1936 he entered Rostov State University. Not wanting to make literature his main specialty, he chose the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. According to the recollection of a school and university friend, “... I studied mathematics not so much by vocation, but because there were exceptionally educated and very interesting teachers at the Physics and Mathematics”. One of them was D. D. Mordukhai-Boltovskoy. At the university, Solzhenitsyn studied "excellently" (Stalin scholarship), continued literary exercises, in addition to university studies, independently studied history and Marxism-Leninism. He graduated from the university in 1941 with honors, he was awarded the qualification of a second-class research worker in the field of mathematics and a teacher. The dean's office recommended him for the position of university assistant or graduate student.

From the very beginning of his literary activity, he was keenly interested in the history of the First World War and the revolution. In 1937, he began to collect materials on the "Samson catastrophe", wrote the first chapters of "August the Fourteenth" (from orthodox communist positions). He was interested in the theater, in the summer of 1938 he tried to pass the exams at the theater school of Yu. A. Zavadsky, but unsuccessfully. In 1939 he entered the correspondence department of the Faculty of Literature of the Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History in Moscow. He interrupted his studies in 1941 due to the war.

In August 1939 he and his friends made a kayak trip along the Volga. The life of the writer from that time until April 1945 is described by him in his autobiographical poem Dorozhenka (1947-1952).

During the war

With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Solzhenitsyn was not immediately mobilized, as he was recognized as "limited fit" for health reasons. Actively sought to be drafted to the front. In September 1941, together with his wife, he received a distribution as a school teacher in Morozovsk, Rostov Region, but already on October 18 he was called up and sent to a freight equestrian convoy as a private.

The events of the summer of 1941 - the spring of 1942 are described by Solzhenitsyn in the unfinished story "Love the Revolution" (1948).

He sought direction to a military school, in April 1942 he was sent to an artillery school in Kostroma; in November 1942 he was released as a lieutenant, sent to Saransk, where the Reserve Artillery Reconnaissance Regiment was located to form artillery instrumental reconnaissance divisions.

• In the active army since February 1943; served as commander of the 2nd sound reconnaissance battery of the 794th Separate Army Reconnaissance Artillery Battalion (OARAD) of the 44th Cannon-Artillery Brigade (PABR) of the 63rd Army on the Central and Bryansk Fronts, later, from the spring of 1944 - the 68th Sevsko - Rechitsa PABR (field mail No. 07900 "F") of the 48th Army of the Second Belorussian Front. Battle route - from Orel to East Prussia. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War and the Red Star, on September 15, 1943, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the rank of senior lieutenant, on May 7, 1944 - captain.

At the front, despite the strictest ban, he kept a diary. He wrote a lot, sent his works to Moscow writers for review; in 1944 he received a favorable review from B. A. Lavrenyov.

Arrest and imprisonment

Arrest and sentence

At the front, Solzhenitsyn continued to be interested in public life, but became critical of Stalin (for "distorting Leninism"); in correspondence with an old friend (Nikolai Vitkevich), he spoke abusively about the “Godfather”, under which Stalin was guessed, kept in his personal belongings a “resolution” drawn up together with Vitkevich, in which he compared the Stalinist order with serfdom and talked about the creation of an “organization” after the war to restore the so-called "Leninist" norms.

The letters aroused the suspicion of military censorship. On February 2, 1945, telegraph order No. 4146 of the Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Counterintelligence "Smersh" of the NPO of the USSR, Lieutenant General Babich, followed by telegraph order No. 4146 on the immediate arrest of Solzhenitsyn and his delivery to Moscow. On February 3, the army counterintelligence launched an investigation file 2/2 No. 3694-45. On February 9, Solzhenitsyn was arrested at the headquarters of the unit, deprived of military rank captain, and then sent to Moscow, to the Lubyanka prison. Interrogations continued from February 20 to May 25, 1945 (investigator - assistant chief of the 3rd department of the XI department of the 2nd department of the NKGB of the USSR, captain of state security Ezepov). On June 6, the head of the 3rd branch of the XI department of the 2nd directorate, Colonel Itkin, his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Rublev and investigator Ezepov, drew up an indictment, which was approved on June 8 by State Security Commissar 3rd rank Fedotov. On July 7, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced in absentia by a Special Conference to 8 years in labor camps and eternal exile at the end of the term of imprisonment (under article 58, paragraph 10, part 2, and paragraph 11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR).

Conclusion

In August he was sent to a camp in New Jerusalem, on September 9, 1945 he was transferred to a camp in Moscow, whose prisoners were engaged in the construction of residential buildings on the Kaluga Gate (now Gagarin Square).

In June 1946 he was transferred to the system of special prisons of the 4th special department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in September he was sent to a closed design bureau (“sharashka”) at the aircraft engine plant in Rybinsk, five months later, in February 1947, to a “sharashka” in Zagorsk, 9 July 1947 - to a similar institution in Marfin (on the northern outskirts of Moscow). There he worked as a mathematician.

In Marfin, Solzhenitsyn began work on the autobiographical poem "Dorozhenka" and the story "Love the Revolution", which was conceived as a prose continuation of "Dorozhenka". Later last days on the Marfinskaya sharashka are described by Solzhenitsyn in the novel “In the First Circle”, where he himself is bred under the name of Gleb Nerzhin, and his cellmates Dmitry Panin and Lev Kopelev - Dmitry Sologdin and Lev Rubin.

In December 1948, his wife divorced Solzhenitsyn in absentia.

On May 19, 1950, Solzhenitsyn, due to a quarrel with the “sharashka” authorities, was transferred to the Butyrka prison, from where he was sent to Steplag in August - to a special camp in Ekibastuz. Almost a third of his term of imprisonment - from August 1950 to February 1953 - Alexander Isaevich served in the north of Kazakhstan. In the camp was general works, for some time - a foreman, participated in a strike. Later, camp life will receive a literary embodiment in the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", and the prisoners' strike - in the film script "Tanks Know the Truth".

In the winter of 1952, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with seminoma, he was operated on in the camp.

Liberation and exile

In conclusion, Solzhenitsyn was completely disillusioned with Marxism, and over time he leaned towards Orthodox-patriotic ideas. Already in the "sharashka" he began to write again, in Ekibastuz he composed poems, poems ("Dorozhenka", "Prussian Nights") and plays in verse ("Prisoners", "Feast of the Victors") and memorized them.

After his release, Solzhenitsyn was exiled to a settlement "forever" (the village of Berlik, Kokterek district, Dzhambul region, southern Kazakhstan). He worked as a teacher of mathematics and physics in grades 8-10 of the local secondary school named after Kirov.

By the end of 1953, his health deteriorated sharply, the examination revealed a cancerous tumor, in January 1954 he was sent to Tashkent for treatment, and in March he was discharged with significant improvement. Illness, treatment, healing and hospital experiences formed the basis of the story "Cancer Ward", which was conceived in the spring of 1955.

Rehabilitation

In June 1956, by decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn was released without rehabilitation "due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions."

In August 1956 he returned from exile to Central Russia. Lived in the village of Miltsevo (post office Peat product of the Kurlovsky district (now Gus-Khrustalny district) Vladimir region), taught mathematics and electrical engineering (physics) in grades 8-10 of the Mezinovskaya secondary school. Then he met his ex-wife, who finally returned to him in November 1956 (the remarriage was concluded on February 2, 1957). Solzhenitsyn's life in the Vladimir region is reflected in the story "Matryonin Dvor".

On February 6, 1957, by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated.

From July 1957 he lived in Ryazan, worked as a teacher of physics and astronomy at secondary school No. 2.

First publications

In 1959, Solzhenitsyn wrote the story Shch-854 (later published in the Novy Mir magazine under the title One Day of Ivan Denisovich) about the life of a simple prisoner from Russian peasants, in 1960 - the stories “A village is not worth without a righteous man” and "Right Hand", the first "Tiny", the play "The Light that is in you" ("Candle in the wind"). He experienced a creative crisis, seeing the impossibility of publishing his works.

In 1961, impressed by the speech of Alexander Tvardovsky (editor of the Novy Mir magazine) at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, he handed over Shch-854 to him, having previously removed the most politically sharp fragments from the story, which were obviously not passed through Soviet censorship. Tvardovsky rated the story extremely highly, invited the author to Moscow and began to seek publication of the work. N. S. Khrushchev overcame the resistance of the members of the Politburo and allowed the publication of the story. The story entitled "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published in the journal "New World" (No. 11, 1962), immediately republished and translated into foreign languages. December 30, 1962 Solzhenitsyn was admitted to the Writers' Union of the USSR.

Shortly thereafter, the journal Novy Mir (No. 1, 1963) published The Village Isn't Standing Without a Righteous Man (under the title Matryonin Dvor) and The Incident at the Kochetovka Station (under the title The Incident at the Krechetovka Station).

The first publications caused a huge number of responses from writers, public figures, critics and readers. Letters from readers - former prisoners (in response to "Ivan Denisovich") laid the foundation for the "Gulag Archipelago".

Solzhenitsyn's stories stood out sharply against the background of the works of that time for their artistic merit and civic courage. This was emphasized at that time by many, including writers and poets. Thus, V. T. Shalamov wrote in a letter to Solzhenitsyn in November 1962:

In the summer of 1963, he created the next, fifth in a row, truncated "under censorship" edition of the novel "In the First Circle", intended for printing (of 87 chapters - "Circle-87"). Four chapters from the novel were selected by the author and offered to the New World "...for testing, under the guise of" Fragment "...".

On December 28, 1963, the editors of the Novy Mir magazine and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art nominated One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for the Lenin Prize for 1964 (as a result of a vote by the Prize Committee, the proposal was rejected).

In 1964, for the first time, he gave his work to samizdat - a cycle of "poems in prose" under the general title "Tiny".

In the summer of 1964, the fifth edition of The First Circle was discussed and accepted for publication in 1965 by Novy Mir. Tvardovsky got acquainted with the manuscript of the novel "Cancer Ward" and even offered it to Khrushchev for reading (again - through his assistant Lebedev). Solzhenitsyn met with Shalamov, who had previously spoken favorably of Ivan Denisovich, and invited him to work together on Archipelago.

In the fall of 1964, the play Candle in the Wind was accepted for production at the Lenin Komsomol Theater in Moscow.

"Tiny" penetrated abroad through samizdat and under the title "Etudes and Tiny Stories" was published in October 1964 in Frankfurt in the journal "Grani" (No. 56) - this is the first publication in the foreign Russian press of Solzhenitsyn's work, rejected in the USSR.

In 1965, with B. A. Mozhaev, he traveled to the Tambov region to collect materials about the peasant uprising (on the trip the name of the epic novel about the Russian revolution was determined - “The Red Wheel”), began the first and fifth parts of the Archipelago (in Solotch, Ryazan region and on the Kopli-Märdi farm near Tartu), finished work on the stories "What a pity" and "Zakhar-Kalita", published on November 4 in " Literary newspaper”(arguing with Academician V.V. Vinogradov) the article “It’s not customary to whiten cabbage soup with tar, that’s sour cream” in defense of Russian literary speech:

On September 11, the KGB searched the apartment of Solzhenitsyn's friend V. L. Teush, with whom Solzhenitsyn kept part of his archive. Manuscripts of poems, "In the First Circle", "Tiny", the plays "Republic of Labor" and "Feast of the Winners" were confiscated.

The Central Committee of the CPSU issued a closed edition and distributed among the nomenklatura, "to convict the author", "The Feast of the Winners" and the fifth edition of "In the First Circle". Solzhenitsyn wrote complaints about the illegal seizure of manuscripts to the Minister of Culture of the USSR P. N. Demichev, secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU L. I. Brezhnev, M. A. Suslov and Yu. literature and art.

Four stories were offered to the editors of Ogonyok, Oktyabrya, Literaturnaya Rossiya, Moskva, but were rejected everywhere. The newspaper "Izvestia" typed the story "Zakhar-Kalita" - the finished set was scattered, "Zakhar-Kalita" was transferred to the newspaper "Pravda" - the refusal of N. A. Abalkin, head of the department of literature and art, followed.

At the same time, the collection “A. Solzhenitsyn. Favorites ”:“ One day ... ”,“ Kochetovka ”and“ Matryonin Dvor ”; in Germany in the publishing house "Posev" - a collection of stories in German.

dissidence

By March 1963, Solzhenitsyn had lost Khrushchev's favor (not being awarded the Lenin Prize, refusing to publish the novel In the First Circle). After L. Brezhnev came to power, Solzhenitsyn practically lost the opportunity to legally publish and speak. In September 1965, the KGB confiscated Solzhenitsyn's archive with his most anti-Soviet works, which aggravated the situation of the writer. Taking advantage of a certain inaction of the authorities, in 1966 Solzhenitsyn began an active public activity (meetings, speeches, interviews with foreign journalists): on October 24, 1966, he read excerpts from his works at the Institute of Atomic Energy. Kurchatov (“The Cancer Ward” - the chapters “How People Live”, “Justice”, “Absurdities”; “In the First Circle” - sections on prison dates; the first act of the play “A Candle in the Wind”), November 30 - at an evening at the Institute Oriental studies in Moscow (“In the first circle” - chapters on exposing informers and the insignificance of operas; “Cancer Ward” - two chapters). Then he began to distribute his novels "In the First Circle" and "Cancer Ward" in samizdat. In February 1967, he secretly finished the work "The Gulag Archipelago" - according to the author's definition, "the experience artistic research».

In May 1967, he sent out a "Letter to the Congress" of the Writers' Union of the USSR, which became widely known among the Soviet intelligentsia and in the West.

After the Letter, the authorities began to perceive Solzhenitsyn as a serious opponent. In 1968, when the novels “In the First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” were published in the USA and Western Europe without the permission of the author, which brought the writer popularity, the Soviet press began a propaganda campaign against the author. Shortly thereafter, he was expelled from the Writers' Union of the USSR.

In August 1968, Solzhenitsyn met Natalya Svetlova, they began an affair. Solzhenitsyn began to seek a divorce from his first wife. With great difficulty, the divorce was obtained on July 22, 1972.

After being expelled, Solzhenitsyn began to openly declare his Orthodox-patriotic convictions and sharply criticize the authorities. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the prize was eventually awarded to him. From the first publication of Solzhenitsyn's work to the awarding of the award, only eight years passed - such in history Nobel Prizes in literature there was neither before nor after. The writer emphasized political aspect awarding the prize, although the Nobel Committee denied it. AT Soviet newspapers a powerful propaganda campaign against Solzhenitsyn was organized, up to the publication in the Soviet press of Dean Reed's "open letter to Solzhenitsyn". The Soviet authorities offered Solzhenitsyn to leave the country, but he refused.

In the late 1960s - early 1970s, a special unit was created in the KGB, which was exclusively engaged in the operational development of Solzhenitsyn - the 9th department of the 5th directorate.

On June 11, 1971, Solzhenitsyn's novel "August 14th" was published in Paris, in which the author's Orthodox-patriotic views are clearly expressed. In August 1971, the KGB carried out an operation to physically eliminate Solzhenitsyn - during a trip to Novocherkassk, he was secretly injected with an unknown poisonous substance (presumably ricin). The writer survived after that, but was seriously ill for a long time.

In 1972, he wrote a Lenten Letter to Patriarch Pimen about the problems of the Church, in support of the speech of Archbishop Hermogen (Golubev) of Kaluga.

In 1972-1973 he worked on the epic "Red Wheel", but did not conduct active dissident activities.

In August - September 1973, relations between the authorities and dissidents escalated, which also affected Solzhenitsyn.

On August 23, 1973, he gave a long interview to foreign correspondents. On the same day, the KGB detained one of the writer's assistants, Elizaveta Voronyanskaya. During interrogation, she was forced to reveal the location of one copy of the manuscript of The Gulag Archipelago. When she returned home, she hanged herself. On September 5, Solzhenitsyn found out about what had happened and ordered that the printing of Archipelago be started in the West (by the immigrant publishing house YMCA-Press). Then he sent the leadership of the USSR "Letter to the leaders of the Soviet Union", in which he called for abandoning the communist ideology and taking steps to turn the USSR into a Russian national state. Since the end of August, a large number of articles have been published in the Western press in defense of dissidents and, in particular, Solzhenitsyn.

A powerful propaganda campaign against dissidents was launched in the USSR. On August 31, the Pravda newspaper published an open letter from a group of Soviet writers condemning Solzhenitsyn and A. D. Sakharov, “slandering our state and social order". On September 24, the KGB, through Solzhenitsyn's ex-wife, offered the writer the official publication of the story Cancer Ward in the USSR in exchange for refusing to publish The Gulag Archipelago abroad. However, Solzhenitsyn, saying that he had no objection to the publication of Cancer Ward in the USSR, did not express a desire to bind himself by an unspoken agreement with the authorities. In the last days of December 1973, the publication of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was announced. A massive campaign to denigrate Solzhenitsyn as a traitor to the motherland with the label of "literary Vlasov" began in the Soviet mass media. The emphasis was not on the real content of The Gulag Archipelago (an artistic study of the Soviet camp-prison system of 1918-1956), which was not discussed at all, but on Solzhenitsyn's alleged solidarity with "traitors to the motherland during the war, policemen and Vlasovites."

In the USSR, during the years of stagnation, August 1919 and The Gulag Archipelago (as well as the first novels) were distributed in samizdat.

At the end of 1973, Solzhenitsyn became the initiator and collector of the group of authors of the collection “From Under the Rocks” (published by the YMCA-Press in Paris in 1974), wrote articles for this collection “On the return of breath and consciousness”, “Repentance and self-restraint as a category of national life", "Education".

Exile

On January 7, 1974, the release of the "Gulag Archipelago" and measures to "suppress anti-Soviet activities" by Solzhenitsyn were discussed at a meeting of the Politburo. The question was submitted to the Central Committee of the CPSU, Yu. V. Andropov and others spoke out in favor of expulsion; for arrest and exile - Kosygin, Brezhnev, Podgorny, Shelepin, Gromyko and others. Andropov's opinion prevailed. It is interesting that earlier one of the "Soviet leaders", the Minister of Internal Affairs N. Shchelokov, sent a note to the Politburo in defense of Solzhenitsyn ("On the Question of Solzhenitsyn", October 7, 1971), but his proposals (including - to publish the Cancer Ward ”) did not find support. According to the then head of the Moscow passport office, police colonel N. Ya. Amosov: “Judging by the characteristic statements of Shchelokov, he clearly did not like all this fuss. (...) but it was not Shchelokov, for all his position, who was given the opportunity to solve this “state” issue.

On February 12, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, accused of treason and deprived of Soviet citizenship. On February 13, he was expelled from the USSR (delivered to Germany by plane).

On February 14, 1974, an order was issued by the head of the Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press under the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On the Withdrawal of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s Works from Libraries and Booksellers”. In accordance with this order, the issues of the Novy Mir magazines were destroyed: No. 11 for 1962 (the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in it), No. 1 for 1963 (with the stories “Matryonin Dvor” and “The Incident at the Station Krechetovka"), No. 7 for 1963 (with the story "For the good of the cause") and No. 1 for 1966 (with the story "Zakhar-Kalita"); "Roman-gazeta" No. 1 for 1963 and separate editions of "Ivan Denisovich" (publishing houses "Soviet Writer" and Uchpedgiz - a publication for the blind, as well as publications in Lithuanian and Estonian). Foreign publications (including magazines and newspapers) with the works of Solzhenitsyn were also subject to confiscation. The publications were destroyed by "cutting into small pieces", which was documented by an appropriate act signed by the head of the library and its employees who destroyed the magazines.

On March 29, the Solzhenitsyn family left the USSR. The archive and military awards of the writer were secretly taken abroad by the assistant to the US military attache, William Odom. Shortly after his expulsion, Solzhenitsyn made a short trip to Northern Europe, as a result decided to temporarily settle in Zurich, Switzerland.

On March 3, 1974, a "Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union" was published in Paris; leading Western editions and many democratically minded dissidents in the USSR, including A. D. Sakharov and Roy Medvedev, rated the Letter as anti-democratic, nationalistic, and containing "dangerous delusions"; Solzhenitsyn's relationship with the Western press continued to deteriorate.

In the summer of 1974, with fees from the Gulag Archipelago, he created the Russian Public Fund for Assistance to the Persecuted and Their Families to help political prisoners in the USSR (parcels and money transfers to places of detention, legal and illegal material assistance to the families of prisoners).

In 1974-1975, in Zurich, he collected materials about Lenin's life in exile (for the epic "Red Wheel"), completed and published his memoirs "A Calf Butted an Oak".

In April 1975, he traveled with his family through Western Europe, then went to Canada and the United States. In June - July 1975, Solzhenitsyn visited Washington and New York, delivered speeches at the congress of trade unions and in the US Congress. In his speeches, Solzhenitsyn sharply criticized the communist regime and ideology, called on the United States to abandon cooperation with the USSR and the policy of detente; at that time, the writer still continued to perceive the West as an ally in the liberation of Russia from "communist totalitarianism." At the same time, Solzhenitsyn feared that in the event of a rapid transition to democracy in the USSR, interethnic conflicts could escalate.

In August 1975 he returned to Zurich and continued to work on the Red Wheel epic.

In February 1976, he made a trip to Great Britain and France, by which time anti-Western motives became noticeable in his speeches. In March 1976, the writer visited Spain. In a sensational speech on Spanish television, he spoke approvingly of the recent Franco regime and warned Spain against "moving too fast towards democracy." Criticism of Solzhenitsyn intensified in the Western press, and some leading European and American politicians declared their disagreement with his views.

Soon after his appearance in the West, he became close to the old emigre organizations and the YMCA-Press publishing house, in which he occupied a dominant position, without becoming its formal leader. He was cautiously criticized in the emigrant environment for the decision to remove the emigrant public figure Morozov, who led the publishing house for about 30 years, from the leadership of the publishing house.

Solzhenitsyn’s ideological differences with the emigration of the “third wave” (that is, those who left the USSR in the 1970s) and Western activists of the Cold War are covered in his memoirs “A grain fell between two millstones”, as well as in numerous emigrant publications.

In April 1976, he moved to the United States with his family and settled in the town of Cavendish (Vermont). After his arrival, the writer returned to work on The Red Wheel, for which he spent two months in the Russian émigré archive at the Hoover Institution.

He rarely spoke with representatives of the press and the public, which is why he was known as a "Vermont recluse."

Back in Russia

With the advent of perestroika, the official attitude in the USSR towards the work and activities of Solzhenitsyn began to change. Many of his works were published, in particular, in the journal Novy Mir in 1989, separate chapters of the Gulag Archipelago were published.

On September 18, 1990, at the same time, Solzhenitsyn's article was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda on the ways of reviving the country, on the reasonable, in his opinion, foundations for building the life of the people and the state - "How do we equip Russia." The article developed the old thoughts of Solzhenitsyn, expressed earlier in his “Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union” and journalistic works, in particular, included in the collection “From under the rocks”. The author's fee for this article Solzhenitsyn transferred in favor of the victims of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The article generated a huge response.

In 1990, Solzhenitsyn was restored to Soviet citizenship with the subsequent termination of the criminal case, in December of the same year he was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR for the Gulag Archipelago.

According to the story of V. Kostikov, during the first official visit of B. N. Yeltsin to the United States in 1992, immediately upon arrival in Washington, Boris Nikolayevich called Solzhenitsyn from the hotel and had a “long” conversation with him, in particular, about the Kuril Islands. “The opinion of the writer turned out to be unexpected and shocking for many: “I have studied the entire history of the islands since the 12th century. These are not our islands, Boris Nikolaevich. Need to give. But it's expensive...'

On April 27-30, 1992, film director Stanislav Govorukhin visited Solzhenitsyn at his home in Vermont and filmed TV movie"Alexander Solzhenitsyn" in two parts.

Together with his family, he returned to his homeland on May 27, 1994, having flown from the USA to Magadan. After that, from Vladivostok, I traveled by train across the country and ended the journey in the capital. He spoke in the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

In the mid-1990s, by personal order of President B. Yeltsin, he was presented with the Sosnovka-2 state dacha in Troitse-Lykovo. The Solzhenitsyns designed and built a two-story brick house there with a large hall, a glazed gallery, a living room with a fireplace, a concert piano and a library where portraits of P. Stolypin and A. Kolchak hang.

In 1997 he was elected a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, but he refused the award: “I cannot accept the award from the supreme power that has brought Russia to its current disastrous state.”

He was awarded the Big Gold Medal named after M.V. Lomonosov (1998).

In April 2006, answering questions from the Moscow News newspaper, Solzhenitsyn stated:

On June 12, 2007, President Vladimir Putin visited Solzhenitsyn and congratulated him on being awarded the State Prize.

Shortly after the author's return to the country, a literary prize his name to award writers "whose work has high artistic merit, contributes to the self-knowledge of Russia, makes a significant contribution to the preservation and careful development of the traditions of Russian literature."

He spent the last years of his life in Moscow and at a dacha outside Moscow. At the end of 2002, he suffered a severe hypertensive crisis, the last years of his life he was seriously ill, but continued to engage in creative activity. Together with his wife Natalya Dmitrievna, President of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Foundation, he worked on the preparation and publication of his most complete, 30-volume collected works. After the severe operation he underwent, only his right hand worked.

Death and burial

Solzhenitsyn's last confession was received by Archpriest Nikolai Chernyshov, cleric of the Church of St. Nicholas in Klyoniki.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008 at the age of 90, in his home in Troitse-Lykovo. Death occurred at 23:45 Moscow time from acute heart failure.

On August 5, in the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences, of which AI Solzhenitsyn was a full member, a civil memorial service and farewell to the deceased took place. This funeral ceremony was attended by former President of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev, Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yu. S. Osipov, Rector of Moscow State University V. A. Sadovnichiy, former Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Academician E. M. Primakov figures Russian culture and several thousand citizens.

Requiem Liturgy and Funeral Service on August 6, 2008 at Great Cathedral the Moscow Donskoy Monastery was made by Archbishop Orekhovo-Zuevsky Alexy (Frolov), vicar of the Moscow diocese. On the same day, the ashes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn were interred with military honors (as a war veteran) in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery behind the altar of the Church of St. John of the Ladder, next to the grave of the historian Vasily Klyuchevsky. Russian President D. A. Medvedev returned to Moscow from a short vacation to attend the funeral service.

On August 3, 2010, on the second anniversary of his death, a monument was erected on the grave of Solzhenitsyn - a marble cross, created according to the project of the sculptor D. M. Shakhovsky.

Family Children

• Wives:
• Natalya Alekseevna Reshetovskaya (1919-2003; married to Solzhenitsyn from April 27, 1940 to (formally) 1972), author of five memoirs about her husband, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Reading Russia (1990), Rupture (1992) and others.
• Natalia Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyna (Svetlova) (b. 1939) (since April 20, 1973)
• Sons from a second marriage: Ermolai (b. 1970; in 2010 - managing partner of the Moscow office of McKinsey Company CIS), Ignat (b. 1972), Stepan (b. 1973). Yermolai and Stepan live and work in Russia, Ignat is a pianist and conductor, a professor at the Philadelphia Conservatory.
• The adopted son is the son of N. D. Solzhenitsyna from his first marriage, Dmitry Tyurin (1962-1994, died just before returning to Russia, buried in the USA).
• Grandchildren: Ivan, Andrei, Dmitry, Anna, Ekaterina, Tatyana (daughter of the adopted son of Dmitry Tyurin).

Accusations of informing the NKVD

Beginning in 1976, the West German writer and criminologist Frank Arnau accused Solzhenitsyn of camp "snitching", referring to a copy of the autograph of the so-called "denunciation of Vetrov" dated January 20, 1952. The reason for the accusations was the description by Solzhenitsyn himself in chapter 12 of the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago of the process of recruiting him by the NKVD officers as informers (under the pseudonym "Vetrov"). Solzhenitsyn also emphasized that, being formally recruited, he did not write a single denunciation. It is noteworthy that even the Czechoslovakian journalist Tomasz Rzezach, who wrote the book “Solzhenitsyn's Spiral of Treason” by order of the 5th KGB Directorate, did not consider it possible to use this “document” obtained by Arnau. Solzhenitsyn provided the Western press with samples of his handwriting for a handwriting examination, but Arnau declined to conduct an examination. In turn, Arnau and Rzezach were accused of contacts with the Stasi and the KGB, whose Fifth Directorate, as part of Operation Spider, tried to discredit Solzhenitsyn.

In 1998, journalist O. Davydov put forward a version of “self-donation”, in which Solzhenitsyn, in addition to himself, accused four people, one of whom, N. Vitkevich, was sentenced to ten years. Solzhenitsyn denied these accusations.

Creation

Solzhenitsyn's work is distinguished by the setting of large-scale epic tasks, the demonstration of historical events through the eyes of several characters of different social levels, located on opposite sides of the barricades. His style is characterized by biblical allusions, associations with the classical epic (Dante, Goethe), the symbolism of the composition, the author's position is not always expressed (a clash of different points of view is presented). Distinctive feature his works are documentaries; most of the characters have real prototypes personally known to the writer. "Life for him is more symbolic and meaningful than literary fiction." The novel The Red Wheel is characterized by the active involvement of a purely documentary genre (reportage, transcripts), the use of modernist poetics (Solzhenitsyn himself recognized the influence of Dos Passos on him); in the general artistic philosophy, the influence of Leo Tolstoy is noticeable.

For Solzhenitsyn, as in fiction, and in essayism, attention to the riches of the Russian language is characteristic, the use of rare words from the Dahl dictionary (which he began to analyze in his youth), Russian writers and everyday experience, replacing them with foreign words; this work was crowned with the separately published "Russian Dictionary of Language Expansion"

Positive ratings

K. I. Chukovsky called Ivan Denisovich a “literary miracle” in an internal review: “With this story, a very strong, original and mature writer entered literature”; "a marvelous depiction of camp life under Stalin".

A. A. Akhmatova highly appreciated Matryonin Dvor, noting the symbolism of the work (“This is more terrible than Ivan Denisovich ... There you can push everything onto a cult of personality, but here ... After all, it’s not Matryona, but the whole Russian village fell under a steam locomotive and to smithereens…”), figurativeness of individual details.

Andrei Tarkovsky in 1970 noted in his diary: “He good writer. And above all, a citizen. Somewhat embittered, which is quite understandable if you judge him as a person, and which is more difficult to understand, considering him primarily a writer. But his personality is heroic. Noble and stoic."

Human rights activist G.P. Yakunin believed that Solzhenitsyn was "a great writer - of a high level not only from an artistic point of view", and also managed to dispel faith in the communist utopia in the West with the "Gulag Archipelago".

Solzhenitsyn's biographer L. I. Saraskina owns such a general description of her hero: “He emphasized many times:“ I am not a dissident. He is a writer - and he never felt like anyone else ... he would not lead any party, he would not accept any post, although he was expected and called. But Solzhenitsyn, oddly enough, is strong when he is a warrior alone in the field. He proved it many times."

Literary critic L. A. Anninsky believed that Solzhenitsyn played a historical role as a “prophet”, a “political practitioner”, who destroyed the system, who, in the eyes of society, was responsible for the negative consequences of his activities, from which he himself was “horrified”.

V. G. Rasputin believed that Solzhenitsyn - “both in literature and in public life... one of the most powerful figures in the history of Russia", "a great moralist, a just man, a talent".

V.V. Putin said that during all his meetings with Solzhenitsyn, he “was struck every time by how organic and convinced a statesman Solzhenitsyn was. He could oppose the existing regime, disagree with the authorities, but the state was a constant for him.”

Criticism

Criticism of Solzhenitsyn since 1962, when One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published, is quite complex picture; often former allies after 10-20 years fell upon him with harsh accusations. Two unequal parts can be distinguished - a voluminous criticism of literary creativity and socio-political views (representatives of almost the entire social spectrum, in Russia and abroad) and sporadic discussions of individual "controversial" moments of his biography.

In the 1960s - 1970s, a campaign against Solzhenitsyn was carried out in the USSR, with all sorts of accusations against Solzhenitsyn - a "slanderer" and a "literary Vlasovite" - were, in particular, Mikhail Sholokhov, american singer Dean Reed, poet Stepan Shchipachev (author of an article in the Literaturnaya Gazeta entitled "The End of the Literary Vlasovite").

In the USSR, in dissident circles in the 1960s and early 1970s, criticism of Solzhenitsyn was equated, if not with cooperation with the KGB, then with a betrayal of the ideas of freedom. Writer Vladimir Maksimov recalled:

I belonged to the environment that surrounded him and Andrei Sakharov (...) His position at that time seemed to all of us absolutely correct and the only possible one. Any criticism of him, official or private, was perceived by us as a spit in the face or a stab in the back.

Subsequently (Solzhenitsyn himself dated his loss of "unified support of society" to the period between the release of "August the Fourteenth" in June 1971 and the distribution of the "Lenten Letter to Patriarch Pimen" in Samizdat in the spring of 1972), criticism of him also began to come from Soviet dissidents ( both liberal and extremely conservative).

In 1974, Andrei Sakharov was critical of Solzhenitsyn's views, disagreeing with the proposed authoritarian option for the transition from communism (as opposed to the democratic path of development), "religious-patriarchal romanticism" and the reassessment of the ideological factor in the then conditions. Sakharov compared Solzhenitsyn's ideals with official Soviet ideology, including Stalin's, and warned of the dangers associated with them. The dissident Grigory Pomerants, recognizing that in Russia the path to Christianity began for many with the reading of Matryonin Dvor, on the whole did not share Solzhenitsyn’s views on communism as an absolute evil and pointed to the Russian roots of Bolshevism, and also pointed out the dangers of anti-communism as “swallowing fight." Solzhenitsyn's friend in prison in the Sharashka, literary critic and human rights activist Lev Kopelev in exile publicly criticized Solzhenitsyn's views several times, and in 1985 summarized his claims in a letter where he accused Solzhenitsyn of a spiritual split in emigration and intolerance to dissent. The sharp correspondence debate between Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sinyavsky, who repeatedly attacked him in the émigré magazine Syntax, is well known.

Roy Medvedev criticized Solzhenitsyn, pointing out that “his young, orthodox Marxism did not stand the test of the camp, making him an anti-communist. It is impossible to justify oneself and one's instability by slandering the "communists in the camps", portraying them as hard-nosed orthodox or traitors, while distorting the truth. It is unworthy of a Christian, which Solzhenitsyn considers himself to be, to gloat and mock at those who were shot in 1937-1938. Bolsheviks, considering it as retribution for the "Red Terror". And it is absolutely unacceptable to interleave the book with “an element of tendentious untruth, insignificant in number, but impressive in composition.” Medvedev also criticized the Letter to the Leaders, calling it a "disappointing document", "an unrealistic and incompetent utopia", pointing out that "Solzhenitsyn is completely ignorant of Marxism, attributing various nonsense to the teachings", and that "with the technical superiority of the USSR, the predicted war on the part of China would be suicide."

Varlam Shalamov wrote in 1971 about Solzhenitsyn and his work: “Solzhenitsyn’s activity is the activity of a businessman, aimed narrowly at personal success with all the provocative accessories of such an activity…”.

Human rights activist Gleb Yakunin, acknowledging that Solzhenitsyn "was a great writer - of a high level not only from an artistic point of view," described his disappointment with Solzhenitsyn's activities after his expulsion from the USSR, in particular, the fact that Solzhenitsyn, having gone abroad, "all his dissident, human rights activities completely ceased.

The American Soviet historian Richard Pipes wrote about his political and historiosophical views, criticizing Solzhenitsyn for idealizing tsarist Russia and holding the West responsible for communism.

Critics point to the contradictions between Solzhenitsyn's estimates of the number of repressed and archival data that became available during the period of perestroika (for example, estimates of the number of deportees during collectivization - more than 15 million, criticize Solzhenitsyn for justifying the cooperation of Soviet prisoners of war with the Germans during the Great Patriotic War.

Solzhenitsyn's study of the history of the relationship between the Jewish and Russian peoples in the book "Two Hundred Years Together" provoked criticism from a number of publicists, historians and writers.

The writer Vladimir Bushin, who in the mid-1960s published a number of laudatory articles about Solzhenitsyn's work in the central press of the USSR, later sharply criticized his work and activities in the book The Genius of the First Spit (2005).

In 2010, publicist Alexander Dyukov accused Solzhenitsyn of using Wehrmacht propaganda materials as official archival sources of information.

According to the writer Zinoviy Zinik, "<находясь на Западе>, Solzhenitsyn never understood that political ideas have no spiritual value outside of their practical application. In practice, his views on patriotism, morality and religion attracted the most reactionary part of Russian society.

The image of Solzhenitsyn is subjected to satirical image in the novel by Vladimir Voinovich "Moscow 2042" and in the poem by Yuri Kuznetsov "The Way of Christ". Voinovich, in addition, wrote a publicistic book "Portrait against the background of a myth", in which he critically assessed the work of Solzhenitsyn and his role in the spiritual history of the country.

Awards and prizes

perpetuation of memory

On September 20, 1990, the Ryazan City Council awarded A. Solzhenitsyn the title of honorary citizen of the city of Ryazan. Memorial plaques commemorating the work of the writer in the city are installed on the building of the city school No. 2 and residential building No. 17 on Uritsky Street.

In June 2003, a museum dedicated to the writer was opened in the main building of the Ryazan College of Electronics.

On the day of the funeral, President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree "On perpetuating the memory of A. I. Solzhenitsyn", according to which personal scholarships named after A. I. Solzhenitsyn were established for students of Russian universities since 2009, the Moscow government was recommended to assign the name of Solzhenitsyn to one of the streets of the city, and the government of the Stavropol Territory and the administration of the Rostov Region - to take measures to perpetuate the memory of AI Solzhenitsyn in the cities of Kislovodsk and Rostov-on-Don.

On December 11, 2008, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Kislovodsk on the building of the central city library, which was named after Solzhenitsyn.

On September 9, 2009, by order of the Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Andrei Fursenko, the mandatory minimum content of the main educational programs on Russian literature of the 20th century was supplemented by the study of fragments of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's artistic research "The Gulag Archipelago". The “school” version, abbreviated four times, with the full preservation of the structure of the work, was prepared for publication by the writer's widow. Earlier, the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and the story "Matryonin's Yard" were already included in the school curriculum. The writer's biography is studied in history lessons.

In November 2009, the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn was given to one of the streets of the largest park in Rome, Villa Ada.

On August 3, 2010, on the second anniversary of the death of A. I. Solzhenitsyn, the abbot of the Donskoy Monastery, Bishop Kirill of Pavlovo-Posad, concelebrated with the brethren of the monastery, performed a memorial service at the grave of the writer. Before the start of the memorial service, Kirill consecrated a new stone cross erected on the grave of A.I. Solzhenitsyn, designed by the sculptor D. M. Shakhovsky.

On December 11, 2011, on the occasion of the 93rd anniversary of the birth of A. Solzhenitsyn, a commemorative bronze bas-relief of the writer (sculptor D. Lyndin) was installed on the building of the economic and law faculties of the Southern Federal University (SFU) in Rostov-on-Don. The bas-relief was made on public donations on the initiative and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Rostov Region, the administration of Rostov-on-Don, and the leadership of the SFU.

Since 2009, the scientific and cultural center of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Abroad in Moscow (from 1995 to 2009 - the Russian Abroad Library-Foundation) has been named after him - a museum-type scientific and cultural center for the preservation, study and popularization of history and modern life Russian abroad.

On January 23, 2013, at a meeting of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, it was decided to create a second museum in Ryazan dedicated to Solzhenitsyn. Currently, options for the premises for the museum are being considered.

On March 5, 2013, the authorities of the American city of Cavendish (Vermont) decided to create the Solzhenitsyn Museum.

In 2013, the name of Solzhenitsyn was given to the Mezinovskaya secondary school (Gus-Khrustalny district of the Vladimir region), where he taught in 1956-1957. On October 26, a bust of the writer was unveiled near the school.

On September 26, a monument to Solzhenitsyn (sculptor Anatoly Shishkov) was unveiled on the alley of Nobel laureates in front of the building of Belgorod University. It is the first monument to Solzhenitsyn in Russia.

On December 12, 2013, Aeroflot put into operation a Boeing 737-800 NG named A. Solzhenitsyn.

Toponyms

On August 12, 2008, the Government of Moscow adopted a resolution "On perpetuating the memory of A. I. Solzhenitsyn in Moscow", which renamed Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street into Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street and approved the text of the commemorative plaque. Some residents of the street protested in connection with its renaming.

In October 2008, the mayor of Rostov-on-Don signed a decree naming the central avenue of the Liventsovsky microdistrict under construction after Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In 2013, streets in Voronezh and Khabarovsk bear the name of Solzhenitsyn.

On stage and screen

Solzhenitsyn's works in the drama theater

• "Deer and Shalashovka". Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov. Moscow. (1991; updated version - 1993)
• "Feast of the Winners". State Academic Maly Theater of Russia. Moscow. Premiere of the play - January 1995

Drama theater adaptations of Solzhenitsyn's works

• "One day of Ivan Denisovich". Chita Drama Theater (1989)
• "One day of Ivan Denisovich". Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater named after Shevchenko. Directed by Andrey Zholdak. 2003
• "Matryonin's Yard". Russian spiritual theater "Glas". Director (stage version and production) Vladimir Ivanov. Starring Elena Mikhailova ( Matryona), Alexander Mikhailov ( Ignatich). May 11 and 24, June 20, 2007
• "Matryonin's Yard". State Academic Theatre. E. Vakhtangov. Directed by Vladimir Ivanov. Starring Elena Mikhailova ( Matryona), Alexander Mikhailov ( Ignatich). Premiere April 13, 2008.
• "Matryonin's Yard". Yekaterinburg Orthodox Theater "Laboratory of Dramatic Art. M. A. Chekhov” - performance in January 2010. Directed by Natalya Milchenko Matryona- Svetlana Abasheva
• The Gulag Archipelago. Moscow Youth Theater under the direction of Vyacheslav Spesivtsev. Moscow (1990)
• "Word of Truth" Dramatization based on the works of Solzhenitsyn. Theater-studio "Credo". Pyatigorsk (1990)
• "Sharashka" (staged chapters of the novel "In the First Circle"; premiered on December 11, 1998). Performance of the Moscow Theater on Taganka. Director (composition and staging) Yuri Lyubimov, artist David Borovsky, composer Vladimir Martynov. Starring Dmitry Mulyar ( Nerzhin), Timur Badalbeyli ( Ruby), Alexey Grabbe ( Sologdin), Valery Zolotukhin ( Uncle Avenir, Pryanchikov, Spiridon Egorov), Dmitry Vysotsky and Vladislav Malenko ( Volodin), Erwin Haas( Gerasimovich), Yuri Lyubimov ( Stalin). The performance was staged for Solzhenitsyn's 80th birthday.
• "Cancer Corps". Theater of Hans Otto Hans Otto Theater), Potsdam, Germany. 2012. Stage version by John von Duffel ( John von Duffel). Directed by Tobias Vellemeier Tobias Wellemeyer). In the role of Kostoglotov, Wolfgang Vogler ( Wolfgang Vogler), as Rusanov Yon-Kaare Koppe ( Jon-Kaare Koppe).

Solzhenitsyn's works in musical theater

• "In the first circle." Opera. Libretto and music by J. Amy. National Opera of Lyon (1999)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an opera in two acts by A. V. Tchaikovsky. The world premiere took place on May 16, 2009 in Perm on the stage of the Tchaikovsky Academic Opera and Ballet Theater (stage conductor Valery Platonov, stage director Georgy Isahakyan, stage designer Ernst Heydebrecht (Germany), choirmasters Vladimir Nikitenkov, Dmitry Batin, Tatiana Stepanova.

Works by Solzhenitsyn in concert programs

• Reading fragments of the novel "In the First Circle" by artist N. Pavlov at the evening of the Maly Theater (Moscow) "Returned Pages"
• "One day of Ivan Denisovich". Solo performance by A. G. Filippenko. Moscow theater "Practice" (2006). Public reading of the story within the framework of the joint project "One book - two cities" of the All-Russian Library for Foreign Literature (Moscow) and the public (public) library of Chicago; and on the Day of Political Prisoners (2008).
• "The case at the station Kochetovka". Solo performance by A. Filippenko. The television adaptation was made by Clio Film Studio CJSC (Russia) (directed by Stepan Grigorenko) commissioned by the Kultura TV channel (2001). The first broadcast on television on the TV channel "Culture" on August 4, 2008.
• "Solzhenitsyn and Shostakovich" (2010). Alexander Filippenko reads "Tiny" Solzhenitsyn (including on the radio), the music of D. Shostakovich is performed by the ensemble of soloists "Hermitage".
• “After reading the opuses of Solzhenitsyn. Five views on the Gulag country” (“Zone”, “Walking Stage”, “Thieves”, “Lesopoval”, “Godfather and Six”). Performance of the five-part suite by the Ukrainian composer Viktor Vlasov by the Bayan City Ensemble on the stage of the Concert Hall. S. Prokofiev (Chelyabinsk) ( solo concert- October 2010).
• "Reflection in the Water" Program for dramatic actor, soloist and chamber orchestra, including "Tiny" by Solzhenitsyn performed by A. Filippenko and "Preludes" by D. D. Shostakovich performed by the State Academic Chamber Orchestra of Russia conducted by A. Yu. Utkin. Premiere - December 10, 2013 at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

Solzhenitsyn's works in film and television

• Teleplay based on the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", English television company NBC (November 8, 1963).
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Feature Film. Directed by K. Wrede. Screenplay by R. Harwood and A. Solzhenitsyn. Norsk Film (Norway), Leontis Film (Great Britain), Group B Production (USA) (1970)
• An incident at the Krechetovka station. Short film by Gleb Panfilov (1964)
• "Ett möte på Kretjetovka Stationen". Screenplay Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Sweden (TV 1970)
• "Thirteenth Corps" ("Krebsstation"). Dir. Heinz Schirk, screenplay by Karl Wittlinger. FRG (TV 1970)
• Candle in the wind. Television film (screen version of the play "Candle in the Wind"). Directed by Michel Wien; screenplay Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alfreda Aucouturier. Production on ORTF French TV (1973)
• In 1973, a one and a half hour picture based on the novel "In the First Circle" was shot by the Polish director Alexander Ford; script: A. Ford and A. Solzhenitsyn. Denmark-Sweden.
• In the early 1990s, the two-part French film The Fist Circle was released. TV movie. Directed by Sh. Larry. Screenplay by Ch. Cohen and A. Solzhenitsyn. CBC. USA-Canada, jointly with France (1991). The film was shown in Russia in 1994.
• "In the first circle." Solzhenitsyn co-wrote the script and reads the voice-over from the author. Directed by G. Panfilov. TV channel "Russia", film company "Vera" (2006).
• Almost simultaneously with the series, the shooting of a feature film based on the novel took place ( plot basis A. Solzhenitsyn), the script for the film version was written by Gleb Panfilov. The premiere of the film "Keep Forever" took place on December 12, 2008 in cinemas in Moscow and London (with subtitles)