“The great truth for Innokenty used to be that we are given only one life.Now, with the new feeling that had ripened in him, he became aware of another law: that we are given only one conscience, too.A life laid down cannot be reclaimed, nor can a ruined conscience.”

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.