Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and dissident who was instrumental in raising global awareness about political repression in the Soviet Union, particularly the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".

Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Initially losing his faith and becoming an atheist, he embraced Marxism–Leninism. However, his experiences as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, where he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag for criticizing Stalin, led him back to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

After being released and exonerated during the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn wrote novels about repression in the Soviet Union. His first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), received approval from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Despite state attempts to stifle his writing, he published works in other countries, including Cancer Ward (1966), In the First Circle (1968), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973), the latter of which outraged Soviet authorities.

In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union and had his citizenship revoked. He eventually settled in the United States, where he continued to write until his Soviet citizenship was restored in 1990. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994, living there until his death in 2008.