“It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man, while he still believes his troubles will have a favorable outcome, and while he still has the chance to unmask treason or to save someone else by sacrificing himself, he continues to cling to the pitiful remnants of comfort and remains silent and submissive. When he has been taken and destroyed, when he has nothing more to lose, and is, in consequence, ready and eager for heroic action, his belated rage can only spend itself against the stone walls of solitary confinement. Or the breath of the death sentence makes him indifferent to earthly affairs.”

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About Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Soviet and Russian author and dissident

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet and Russian author and dissident. He is known for drawing world attention to political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system, and for receiving the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. His nonfiction book The Gulag Archipelago confronted the Soviet state directly and reached a vast readership. The work made his critique of repression widely known and confirmed his place as a major voice in Russian letters.

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