Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who chronicled the abuses of the Soviet regime and gained worldwide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.) Once asked what Solzhenitsyn means to literature and the history of Russia, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, had this to stay: “It’s impossible to imagine a writer whose affect on a society has been greater than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s affect on the fate of Russia …” In the video posted below, Remnick elaborates on Solzhenitsyn’s contributions, and it’s worth remembering that Remnick won a Pulitzer during the 90s for his bestseller, Lenin’s Tomb.
(Note: you can read the lecture Solzhenitsyn gave upon receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970 here, and listen to his 1978 Harvard graduation speech here.)
