Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer, and a political prisoner. He was exiled from the Soviet Union on 12th February 1974, retuning to Russian in 1994.

Winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, Russia. Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and Communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag labor camp system.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s fame spread throughout the world as he drew upon his experiences of totalitarian duress to write evocative novels like “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward”. His historical works The “Gulag Archipelago” was a highly influential work that amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state and sold tens of millions of copies.

Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure near Moscow on 3 August 2008, at the age of 89. To honor him Russian Federation has issued a commemorative silver coin of 2 rubles with his image.

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