Introduction

Stephen Kotkin: Solzhenitsyn was able, as a single human being, to blacken the image of the Soviet Union globally. Even though he was prohibited from publishing most of his works inside the Soviet Union, they nonetheless appeared and spread usually underground. So he had a massive impact at home as well as abroad. This conversation is based loosely on an essay he wrote for the Times Literary Supplement on a number of recent books by and aboutSolzhenitsyn.