February 9, 1943 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Arrested

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was known for his hatred of the Soviet government of his beloved Russia, and he was accused of trying to overthrow Joseph Stalin’s government. Because of this, he was arrested and sent to the Russian prisons (“Gulags”) on February 9, 1943. While there, he came to faith in Christ, and he would end up winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. His speech “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag,” delivered as an acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize in 1983, is one of his most known. It was a warning to the American people that he believed many of the same patterns that created communist Russia were present in America.