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
... facts of his biography, the newspapers emphasized his distinguished war record and played down the facts of his imprisonment and exile, pointing out that he had suffered from “groundless political accusations” from which he had since ...
... facts, to do so only when he regarded them as “safe” or when they furthered his struggle with the authorities. In this sense, the facts of his biography became a weapon in that struggle, to be described or passed over depending on where ...
... fact make a beginning but, owing to a lack of first-hand material, ran into serious difficulties and abandoned it. By 1974, when Solzhenitsyn was expelled, I was in regular contact with Solzhenitsyn's Swiss lawyer, Dr Heeb, and had been ...
... fact, a time of rapid change, both for Solzhenitsyn and for the society in which he lived. In his own case, the situation was complicated by his particular psychological needs. The lack of a father had been partially compensated for by ...
... fact that the grandson had known no wealth himself; he had experienced only poverty and hardships. His officer father had been of left-liberal sympathies, and both his grandfathers had at one time laboured in the fields as peasants, so ...
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 | |