Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was a Russian novelist, historian, and outspoken critic of the Soviet Union. He was born on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Russia. He served in the Red Army during World War II. In 1945, he was arrested for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter and spent eight years in labor camps, followed by internal exile. His experiences in the Gulag system profoundly influenced his writing. Solzhenitsyn's most famous works include "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," "The Gulag Archipelago," and "Cancer Ward," which exposed the harsh realities of Soviet labor camps and censorship. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. Solzhenitsyn lived in exile in the United States until 1994, when he returned to Russia. He continued to write and speak out on political issues until his death on August 3, 2008.