One of my heroes goes to his reward:
MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian writer and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who shone a light on the inhuman world of the Soviet gulags, died late Sunday, the Itar-Tass news agency said, citing his son Stepan. He was 89.The tough old buzzard survived Stalin's gulags, cancer and a ricin attack. Even though he had been in declining health, as is often the case for those of great age, I'm a little surprised to learn that he could die.The Nobel laureate died of heart failure at his Moscow home at 11:45 pm (1945 GMT), the writer's son said.
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 after writing harrowing works about the Soviet Union's system of labour camps, where he spent eight years from 1945.
Solzhenitsyn toiled obsessively to unearth the darkest secrets of Stalinist rule and ultimately dealt a crippling blow to the Soviet Union's authority.
His most famous work:
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