Born December 11, 1918
Kislovodsk, Soviet Union

Slave in Soviet labor camps,
world-renowned author

From 1927 to 1953, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was ruled by the dictator Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). During Stalin's rule, the government of the USSR enslaved millions of Soviet citizens in labor camps in central Russia, Siberia, central Asia, and above the Arctic Circle. Russian-born novelist, dramatist, and poet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was one of those victims, accused of political crimes and forced as punishment into the Soviet corrective labor camp system known as the gulag (pronounced GOO-lahg) from 1945 to 1953.