A Writer in Prison

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        This article is the first in series with the prelude in my post “A Writer At Work”. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one brilliant man of literature the world has ever known. His gift of knowledge in seeing things from a different perspective and knowing how to express this perspective in writing was something that brought him at such wrong place at the wrong time, the Gulag.

        The Gulag for those who haven’t heard of the word yet was an acronym which denotes a Russian word implying a Soviet government agency administering networks of prison camps situated along the arctic and sub-arctic regions where political prisoners were subjected to forced labor . If anyone has watched the movie with the same title produced in 1984 starring David Keith (Firestarter) and Malcolm McDowell (Blue Thunder/Heroes) you will have a general idea of how a prisoner’s way of life evolves in a camped enclosure situated amidst the frozen wilderness where torture and hardwork was part of everyday life.

        Solzhenitsyn was an artillery officer during World War II until he was denounced in 1945 owing to some  criticisms against Stalin as contained in a letter to a friend (although Solzhenitsyn admitted having done it in “disguised terms”). He spent 8 years in the Gulag afterwards and released later only to be exiled to Kazakhstan for life, his final release having made possible only owing to Stalin’s death in 1953 shortened the exile to 3 years ending in 1956. Writing his novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962 where each day in the life of a prisoner in the Gulag was portrayed earned him the recognition and 8 years hence he was awarded the most coveted Nobel Prize for Literature.

        The publication of the Gulag Archipelago in 1973 detailing the abuses of Gulag prison systems produced a rather untoward reaction in the Soviet press branding Solzhenitsyn a traitor (2nd time) leading him to be deprived of his citizenship in 1974. The second exile brought him in Vermont, US where he finished the last volume of the Archipelago. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 didn’t readily gave the writer an option to return to his homeland until 1994. President Vladimir Putin presented him with Russia’s State Prize. 

        Alexander Solzhenitsyn died of a heart failure in 3 August 2008. A man true to his heart as a writer, a recipient of the Nobel Prize and at one time stripped of his citizenship and branded a traitor. Where could you find a mind deprived of the most luxuries of life even to include his basic rights as a citizen imprisoned and thrown away from home still finding his ultimate fulfilment in writing and making the best of the ordeals? I suppose there’s one thing about the world and that is change. The politics, media issues, technology, economy, etc. When this change twists a government’s concept of right and wrong allowing innocent lives to be shed in the interest of a political standpoint what more could you expect?  Solzhenitsyn died a happy man, I supposed. He took the threats to his life unlike any other stimulation that fuelled his writing. He stood alone and proved himself right amidst common political misdoings. When he was alive, his country at one time tried to disown him, in his death Prime Minister Putin described it as “heavy loss for Russia”. Solzhenitsyn has watched the world changed so much when he was alive until his death. He had only remained true to himself. A prisoner who enjoyed his freedom to the fullest in writing, watching people around him walking scot-free but imprisoned to their whims.