Solzhenitsyn: A BiographyThis 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. |
From inside the book
... Party” and “a writer with a rare talent” in the tradition of Tolstoy. In printing the bare facts of his biography, the newspapers emphasized his distinguished war record and played down the facts of his imprisonment and exile, pointing ...
... Party. Earlier that same year, in fact, in Prague, a then obscure lawyer by the name of Vladimir Ulyanov (alias Lenin) had taken over the leadership of the Social Democratic Party and was laying the foundations of a tightly knit ...
... party, where he would be the life and soul as a host. Plenty of visitors came, there would be card games, charades ... parties at which Fedorovsky and his friends would discuss politics and international affairs, art and literature, as ...
... Party after the death of Lenin. He had eliminated Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev as rivals and intimidated all the rest, and was ready to assert his power. The numerically tiny Communist Party had meanwhile strengthened its grip on the ...
... Party's youth movement, the Komsomol, founded in 1918. In a sense they were a sort of Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scouts, except that they had no independence and were financed and controlled by the Party. They were also ubiquitous—an ...
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 | |
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 | |
Select Bibliography | |