The Solzhenitsyn Affair: A Minority View

Extract

Eight years ago an obscure algebra teacher, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, was introduced to the Soviet public by the publication of his gripping story of life in a Stalinist labor camp, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir (New World), a distinguished liberal literary journal then edited by the poet, Aleksander Tvardovsky. The release of this sensational work was personally approved by both the Party Central Committee and former Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. It followed Khrushchev's famous "Secret Speech" which denounced the evils of the Stalinist regime and blamed them on "the cult of personality."