Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn was a novelist, dramatist, and historian. With his works, the Gulags, a network of Soviet labor camp (see forced labor), became well known. Due to this, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, but also was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. In 1994, Solzhenitsyn went back to Russia. After he died (of heart failure) he received a state funeral. He was very significant for revealing what life was like in the Soviet days.