Although his works were banned in the Soviet Union, the Russian novelist Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (born 1918) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970.Alexander Solzhenitsyn, descended from ...
Read more
The epitome of a socially involved writer, one-time dissident Russian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, became a symbol of Soviet intolerance during the cold war, ...
Read more
In the following essay, Zekulin evaluates several of Solzhenitsyn's stories that deal with the fate of the Russian peasantry and intelligentsia in the Soviet era, arguing that these works deriv...
Read more
In the following essay, Jackson explores the theme of social upheaval and disorder as it is evinced in the life of the symbolic figure Matryona in "Matryona's Home. "
"O, ...
Read more
In the following essay, Spitz analyzes the significance of the structural and linguistic devices of "Matryona's Home" apropos the work's themes, ideals, and ironies.
...
Read more
In the following excerpt, Kodjak offers a survey of theme and plot in Solzhenitsyn's short fiction.
Solzhenitsyn's short stories and novels written roughly over the same years are closel...
Read more
In the following excerpt, Ericson studies the developing themes in Solzhenitsyn's early prose poems and stories and examines the novella Lenin in Zurich as a political work intended to demythol...
Read more
In the following essay, Siegel argues that Solzhenitsyn's vituperative portrait of Vladimir Lenin in his Lenin in Zurich "has many of the traits of [Josef Stalin and is also in part an u...
Read more
In the following essay, Ragsdale associates Matryona of "Matryona's Home " with Mother Russia, and probes the cultural concerns espoused in the work, calling it "the Slavop...
Read more
In the following essay, Koehler studies use of language in Solzhenitsyn's short fiction and contends that the author "has in terms of the Russian literary tradition broken through a barr...
Read more
In the following essay, Clardy studies the importance of the "impending event" as a device used to maintain interest in Solzhenitsyn's narratives about "the revelation of c...
Read more
In the following essay, originally published in 1972, Dunlop examines Solzhenitsyn's short sketches, or prose poems, as works "primarily concerned with the spiritual inadequacy of modern...
Read more
In the following essay, Lottridge associates Solzhenitsyn's "Matryona's Home" and "Zakhar-the-Pouch" ("Zahar-Kalita") with nineteenth-century Ru...
Read more
In the following excerpt, Moody analyzes One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, comparing it with "Matryona's Home. " He concludes that the works "together . . . provide a...
Read more
Critical Essay by Octavio Paz
Solzhenitsyn is not only a critic of Russia and Bolshevism but of the modern age itself. What does it matter if that critique proceeds from presuppositions different from...
Read more
Critical Essay by John Bayley
Can one imagine a famous British author bringing out a poem about his wartime experiences in the style of Henry V, or Paradise Lost, or Childe Harold? And having composed...
Read more
Critical Essay by Elizabeth Hardwick
In a small world, Solzhenitsyn sometimes appears too tall. I would not want to meet the striding Armageddon on the road, glowing as I imagine him to be with eschat...
Read more
Critical Essay by Luellen Lucid
Western critics have been quick to analyze Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's humanitarian concerns and brilliant development of the metaphorical novel. What has been lack...
Read more
Critical Essay by Konstantin Bazarov
[The Second World War] is the only major experience of Solzhenitsyn's life that has been conspicuously absent from his work. But it is the subject of Prussi...
Read more
Critical Essay by Andrej Kodjak
Solzhenitsyn's short stories and novels … are closely linked with one another philosophically. There is, however, a significant difference between the thr...
Read more
Critical Essay by Stephen F. Cohen
["The Oak and the Calf"] is a story that should attract diverse readers. Professional students of the Soviet system will read it for what Solzhenitsyn ...
Read more
Critical Essay by Tomas Venclova
The Oak and the Calf is interesting in a purely literary sense as well [as for its political and social implications]. Like a diary, it pieces itself together before t...
Read more
Critical Essay by Hans Koning
The Oak and the Calf is not fiction; it is a political diary and must be judged on its politics. If Solzhenitsyn sees himself as the calf butting and uprooting the Soviet...
Read more
Critical Essay by Abraham Brumberg
With the publication of The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn lays claim to yet another realm—that of autobiography….
Since Solzhenitsyn clearly possesses...
Read more
Critical Essay by John Bayley
As a religious man Solzhenitsyn is no doubt humble; as a writer he is sublimely conceited. Conceit rather than pride seems to be the word, for pride goes with humility, a...
Read more
Critical Essay by Geoffrey Hosking
[In] The Oak and the Calf, as in Gulag Archipelago, we have in fact two Solzhenitsyns at work. While the field-marshal surveys his battle formations and issues his o...
Read more
Critical Essay by Ken Coates
Solzhenitsyn's new book [The Oak and the Calf] is not really new. It was written in the Soviet Union, and has been revised for this English edition. It is part auto...
Read more
Critical Essay by Georg LukÁcs
The central problem of socialist realism today is to come to terms critically with the Stalin era. Naturally this is the major task of all socialist ideology. Her...
Read more
Critical Essay by Leonid Rzhevsky
The writer's craft begins with his language.
Solzhenitsyn is undoubtedly an innovator in the field of language. His efforts to enliven the modern Russian langu...
Read more
Critical Essay by Christopher Moody
Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been described by different critics as both an old-fashioned writer and a genuine innovator. Paradoxically, both of these views are corre...
Read more
Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
