Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008) was a Russian novelist, dramatist and historian. Through his writings, he made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union’s labour camp system, and for these efforts, Solzhenitsyn was both awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994. That year, he was elected as a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Department of Language and Literature. He was the father of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a well-known conductor and pianist. He died at home after years of declining health on August 3, 2008