Author, fighter, patriot, dissident. One of my heroes. 
On edit: He was a tough old bird, too. He survived WWII, a stint in a labor camp, cancer, and exile. I can’t say I was surprised (In fact, I was expecting it any month), but I’m still sad.
The world could use a few more like him.
"Mother Russia, he cries for you. "
Godspeed.
I have several of his books sitting on my shelf. RIP. 
I just heard when I logged on today…he was old, so I guess we shouldn’t be too shocked, but I still feel like he was a public figure I expected to always be around. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is to me one of the best examples of a very important message in a very sparse and short story.
My very first Russian novel. We had to read it in high school, and it just floored me.
Later on, I had the chance to learn some Russian, and I read a couple of his short stories. Russian quickly became my favorite language because of this.
In the James Bond film Goldeneye (1995), the bad guy Alec Trevelyan describes why he turned traitor. His parents, looking for sanctuary in England after World War II, were returned to the Soviet Union where Stalin had them shot. Trevelyan was then taken in by MI6 at the age of six and went to work for the government that betrayed his parents.
The exact incident in which his parents were handed back – it was a large group in Berlin seeking sanctuary, but the UK did not want to annoy what was still an ally – was described in a footnote in I believe it was The Gulag Archipelago. That is the only reference to it I’ve ever come across to this incident, and if Solzhenitsyn had not mentioned it, I would have thought it was made up just for the movie.
I was a big fan of Solzhenitsyn; he was one of the few contemporary authors whose work I knew would still be read in 100 years. Tremendiously powerful stuff, not only due to the subject matter, but due to his handling of characters and story.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle, The Gulag Archepelago, and August 1914 were among the greatest works of literature produced in the 20th century.
It’s not the only place where that particular exchange is documented, but The Gulag Archipelago is no doubt the most noteworthy. There were a number of other betrayals–including Poles, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, et cetera–being handed over to the Russians by the Allies with full knowledge that they would be imprisoned or executed. The Third Man actually hinges on this as a plot point.
Solzhenitsyn was a great writer and a brave man, a true patriot to a country he loved and a traitor to a corrupt empire that he detested with every fiber of his being. He was brave enough to write Gulag, perceptive enough to call the fall of the Soviet Union far in advance of virtually any other estimate, and iconoclastic enough not to bend to anyone’s desired perception of him. The Western publication of Gulag, along with the contemporary Prague Spring movement and resultant suppression, completely undermined any base of support that Western European far-left liberals had for the Soviet regime, and ultimately probably did more damage to the CPSU than anything done by successive US and NATO efforts in terms of isolating the Soviets on the world stage.
He will be missed, and his works will be placed in the shelf of honor beside those of George Orwell and Graham Greene on my bookshelf.
Stranger
I have described One Day in the Life of Ivan Dennisovich as one of the most beautiful, and heart-wrenching works I’ve ever read. It usually comes up on my list of top books I recommend whenever we do one of those.
And it’s just one of the less important works of Solzhenitsyn.
The man was a giant, and we are poorer for his loss. RIP, indeed.
I started rereading Ivan Denisovich this morning as a tribute. Great man, great writer.
Great writer and great man. He could take an everyday subject and make it wonderful to read about.
RIP Alexander. You and your writing will be missed.
A true hero. I have Gulag Archipelago sitting on my ‘to-be-read’ shelf right now. Perhaps I will start reading it in his memory.
Oh yes, I knew about the betrayals in general, but when I heard that specific incident detailed in Goldeneye, I thought: “Hey! I know that one!” Went back and looked it up, and sure enough. Imagine, a Solzhenitsyn-James Bond link.