Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A 'Man With A Mission'

Published August 4, 2008 at 5:00 AM CDT

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The Nobel Prize-winning author whose books chronicled the horrors of the Soviet gulag system has died of heart failure. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was 89.

NPR's Anne Garrels talks with Steve Inskeep about a rare interview she had with Solzhenitsyn just after he was expelled from the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

Garrels says that when it came to interviews, Solzhenitsyn was a "man with a mission, and it was basically ... everyone's obligation to support him."

Corrected: August 5, 2008 at 9:59 AM CDT

In some broadcasts, we said Solzhenitsyn "couldn't publish any more at home" after his book "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" came out. In fact, he did subsequently publish a few short works in the U.S.S.R.