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The Forum: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Revealing the Gulag

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Revealing the Gulag

BBC Radio 4 - The Forum, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Revealing the Gulag

The Russian writer who exposed the grim, nightmarish world of Soviet forced labour camps

The life of a prison camp survivor whose writing proved how inhumane life in the Gulag had been. With Solzhenitsyn scholars Daniel Mahoney, Elisa Kriza and Leona Toker

The Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a towering literary figure whose novels, chronicles and essays have lifted the lid on the horrors of the Soviet Gulag network, which over several decades incarcerated millions of often innocent prisoners. Solzhenitsyn survived the brutal conditions of a forced labour camp in Kazakhstan and it was this harrowing experience that provided the impetus for his best-known works, starting with his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and culminating in The Gulag Archipelago, a multi-volume history of the Soviet forced labour camps from 1918 to 1956.

Bridget Kendall is joined by Solzhenitsyn scholars Professor Daniel Mahoney from Assumption College in the United States and Dr. Elisa Kriza from Bamberg University, and by Professor Leona Toker of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an expert on labour camp literature.

Photo: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Gulag clothing. (Apic/Getty Images)

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