Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, has died at age 89 of heart failure.

The BBC article has some commentary:

He died in his home in the Moscow area, where he had lived with his wife Natalya, at 2345 local time (1945 GMT), Stepan told Itar-Tass. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to the writer’s family, a Kremlin spokesperson said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy described him as “one of the greatest consciences of 20th Century Russia”. “His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook figure, heir to Dostoyevsky,” he said in a statement.

Solzhenitsyn served as a Soviet artillery officer in World War II and was decorated for his courage but in 1945 was denounced for criticising Stalin in a letter. He spent the next eight years in the Soviet prison system, or Gulag, before being internally exiled to Kazakhstan, where he was successfully treated for stomach cancer.