Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile

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First and foremost, I must acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the subject of this book. Without the full and generous cooperation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, my efforts would have floundered in an ocean of secondary sources. That is not to say that I have not made use of an extensive array of such sources. I have, of course, and the principal published sources have been acknowledged in the Notes, but without Solzhenitsyn’s personal involvement I would not have had the benefit of the insight into his life and work that, I hope and trust, is conveyed in this volume. I am acutely conscious of the privileged nature of my access, not least because of the Russian writer’s well-known distrust of Western biographers and journalists, and this only serves to accentuate my feelings of gratitude. I am mindful, for instance, that a previous biographer met with no success whatsoever in securing Solzhenitsyn’s aid, to the extent that even his letters were not answered. (It was a tribute to that particular biographer’s powers as a writer that the book he produced was still of exceptional quality.) I don’t know why Solzhenitsyn broke his boycott of Western writers in my case, and this is not the place to conjecture, but I am nonetheless delighted to be the beneficiary of his assistance.

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