Solzhenitsyn ran afoul of the authorities because he was something that the regime didn't count on. Unlike a lot of the intellectual class who wanted, let's say, favors, apartments and awards, Solzhenitsyn was after the truth. He believed in a different moral universe opposed to the Soviet regime. They bundled him onto a plane and deported him to the West, where he lived the next 20 years of his life.
Historian and author Stephen Kotkin of Princeton University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the historical significance of the life and work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's birth.