Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Stavropol Territory, on 11 December 1918. His father, an officer in the imperial army, had died even before his birth. His mother, an educated woman of Ukrainian origin, raised him in difficult circumstances but instilled in him a love of literature. He will become a great writer, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970. With his works – such as the Gulag Archipelago – he made the world aware of the reality of repression in the Soviet Union and, in particular, the system of terrible “re-education” camps, where he himself was detained for years. He collected the award only in 1974, after being expelled from the USSR.
He settled in America, but never became a standard bearer of liberal and democratic values. He didn’t like the West at all – “pop” culture horrified him – and for his country he wanted a “return to the origins”, to a good-natured autocracy and a society founded on the values of Orthodox Christianity. A few years after the fall of communism he returned to live in his homeland. Before his death in 2008, he met Putin several times, who shared his nationalist ideal (it is no coincidence that the leader defined him as a “true patriot”). The writer also had ideas about Ukraine that were not very different from Putin’s…
Today’s almanac, December 11: Solzhenitsyn, the writer loved by Putin
https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/almanacco-del-giorno/2024/12/11/news/almanacco_accadde_oggi_11_dicembre_2024_solzhenitsyn_lo_scrittore_amato_da_putin-423878807/?rss