Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his citizenship and expelled from the USSR in 1974 after the publication of "The Gulag Archipelago," a massive historical expose of the Soviet forced labor camp system. The KGB seized his notes, but he managed to smuggle the manuscript out of the country.

Yes, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. The Swedish Academy specifically cited the ethical force with which he pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.

Published in 1962, this novella describes the harrowing but routine struggle for survival of a prisoner named Shukhov in a Soviet Gulag camp. It was the first widely available literary work to expose the reality of Stalin's labor camps to the Soviet public.

After his exile, Solzhenitsyn eventually settled in Cavendish, Vermont, in 1976, where he lived for nearly two decades. He spent his time there working on his massive historical epic, "The Red Wheel," before returning to Russia in 1994.