Solzhenitsyn: the dissident, the imperialist

It was only a few decades ago, when we welcomed the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ as an eyeopener for the world to finally grasp the cruelty of a totalitarian system and Communist repression in the Soviet Union.

Many Western apologists for the Kremlin were finally not only acknowledging the credibility of Solzhenitsyn’s personal experiences in Stalin’s prison colonies, they were extolling his writings as literary masterpieces and supporting his nomination for a Nobel Prize in Literature, which he won in 1970. He refused to travel to Stockholm to receive the prize fearing that the Soviet government would block his return home.