Tag: gulags

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

4,083 words

The memoirs of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are unique in his vast body of work given that they serve more as metadata than data regarding the man’s impact upon the culture and perspective of the political Right. I’m sure this could be the case with the memoirs of any important person. However, with Solzhenitsyn, so often his work was his life. He drew directly from his experiences as a zek to develop his early works, such as his prison plays, his unproduced screenplay The Tanks Know the Truth (about a gulag uprising),  (more…)

5,026 words

Known mostly as a novelist, memoirist, and historian, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had actually completed four plays before his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was published in 1962. He composed his first two, Victory Celebrations and Prisoners, while a zek in the Soviet Gulag (more…)