Which Russian author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970?

The Russian author who won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. His name is also commonly transliterated as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The Swedish Academy honored him “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.” His writing drew heavily on the experience of Soviet repression, especially the labor-camp system. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, published in 1962, brought international attention to the reality of camp life, while The Gulag Archipelago became his best-known historical and documentary work.

Solzhenitsyn did not travel to Stockholm to receive the prize in 1970 because the Soviet authorities feared his international recognition and would not guarantee his return. After he was deported from the Soviet Union in 1974, he accepted the medal and diploma. The distractors were also major Russian Nobel laureates: Ivan Bunin won in 1933, Boris Pasternak in 1958, and Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965.