Week 7 - Solzhenitsyn

Question 1

Solzhenitsyn

Answer 1

Solzhenitsyn’s first novel about life in the Soviet “gulag” was surprisingly published by Novy Mir in 1962, benefitting from the so-called “thaw” instigated by Khruschev after Stalin’s death and Khruschev’s own admiration for the novel

Question 2

Publishing difficulties in the USSR

Answer 2

• Solzhenitsyn circulates stories in samizdat form and they get published in the emigre journal
• Worried that his major novel The First Circle would not be approved for publication, he smuggles out an abridged version on microfilm to the west
• September 1965 KGB raids home of Venianmin Teush—seizes copies of The First Circle and Solzhenitsyn’s “archive”