Heart Failure Claims "Gulag Archipelago" Author

Moscow, Russia (AHN)- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of "Gulag Archipelago" died Sunday night of heart failure at 89. The news of his death was confirmed by his son Stepan.

The Soviet writer won the Nobel Literature Prize. He is best known for accounts of the horrors in the Gulag labor camp.

Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia in 1918, raised by his mother during the Russian Civil War and studied at the Rostov State University and the Moscow Institute of Philosophy Literature and History.

He fought as an artillery commander in the Red Army, but was sent to prison for writing a critical letter to a friend about Josef Stalin.

Aside from "Gulag" his other works include "Cancer Ward," "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The First Circle."

In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from Russia. He lived in Vermont and returned to his country in 1994, where he continued to be critical of Russia's post-Soviet changes as he called for a return to traditional moral values.

Solzhenitsyn rarely made public appearances in his old age. One of his last was in 2007 when he was interviewed by the German newspaper Spiegel, in which he said he was no longer afraid of death. "I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one's existence," he told Spiegel.

Russian leaders led the tribute to the dissident writer. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told Russia's Interfax news agency, Solzhenitsyn was a "man of unique destiny whose name will remain in Russia's history."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in a statement, said, the author remains for Russians, "an example of genuine devotion and selfless serving to the people, fatherland and the ideals of freedom, justice and humanism."

His wife Natalya told Interfax, "He wanted to die in the summer, and he died in the summer...He wanted to die at home, and he died at home. In general, I should say that Alexander Isaevich lived a difficult but happy life."