Solzhenitsyn: A Biography

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Routledge, Jun 15, 2021 - Biography & Autobiography - 1070 pages

This book, first published in 1984, was the first full biography of Solzhenitsyn. Starting with his childhood, it covers every period of his life in considerable detail, showing how Solzhenitsyn’s development paralleled and mirrored the development of Soviet society: ambitious and idealistic in the twenties and thirties, preoccupied with the struggle for survival in the forties, hopeful in the fifties and sixties and disillusioned in the seventies. Solzhenitsyn’s life thus serves as a paradigm for the history of twentieth-century Communism and for the intelligentsia’s attitudes to Communism. At the same time, this book relates Solzhenitsyn’s life to his works, all of which contain a large element of autobiography.

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Contents

25 THE CREST OF THE WAVE
26 FIRST DOUBTS
27 LENIN PRIZE CANDIDATE
28 NOT ANOTHER PASTERNAK
29 ENTER THE
30 THE TURNING
31 A PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT
32 THE BEST FORM OF DEFENCE

7 ARREST
8 AN ENEMY OF THE TOILING MASSES
9 TWO ARE AN ORGANIZATION
10 FIRST STEPS IN THE ARCHIPELAGO
11 TO THE NEW JERUSALEM
12 LIFE AMONG THE TRUSTIES
13 SPECIAL
14 IN THE FIRST CIRCLE
15 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
16 NOT QUITE SIBERIA
17 A SON OF GULAG
18 EXILED IN PERPETUITY
19 CANCER WARD
20 MATRYONAS PLACE
21 THE SCHOOLMASTER FROM RYAZAN
22 ON THE THRESHOLD
23 BREAKTHROUGH
24 A TRUE HELPER OF THE PARTY
33 LETTER TO THE WRITERS CONGRESS
34 PLAYING THE WESTERN CARD
35 PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AT FIFTY
36 EXPULSION FROM THE WRITERS UNION
37 THE TAMING OF NOW MIR 38 THE NOBEL PRIZE
39 THE START OF A VAST ENTERPRISE
40 DEATH OF A POET
41 WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY
42 DIVORCE
43 COMING INTO THE OPEN
44 THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
45 DEPORTED
46 FIRST MONTHS IN THE WEST
47 TAKING POSITIONS
48 CLARIFICATIONS
49 ON THE MOVE
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Michael Scammell