Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, Russia, and is best known for his works that exposed the Soviet Union's forced labor camps and the horrors of Stalinism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 for his works, which included the novels One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn was a vocal critic of the Soviet Union and its oppressive policies, and his works were banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s. He was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and lived in the United States until 1994, when he returned to Russia. He continued to write and speak out against the Soviet Union until his death in 2008. Solzhenitsyn's works are widely considered to be among the most important of the 20th century, and his legacy continues to be felt in Russia and around the world. He is remembered for his courage in speaking out against the Soviet Union and its oppressive policies, and for his powerful works that exposed the truth about life in the Soviet Union.