Russian novelist, dramatist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who told the world about the Soviet labour camp system Gulag through his writings, died at his Moscow home on Sunday, August 3. He was 89 years old.

Widely remembered as the person with an ascetic dress and flowing beard, Solzhenitsyn died due to a heart failure at around 11.45 p.m. So powerful were the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn that it brought him a Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 as well as caused him to go in exile from Soviet Union four years later.

The Russian writer himself spent eight longs years in the Soviet Union's system of labour camps and later depicted the hair-raising experiences in his books. He worked doggedly to shed light on the horrid secrets of Stalin’s rule and it ultimately succeeded in crippling the authority of the Soviet Union.

The President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent their condolences to the family of the late Russian writer. ‘His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook figure, heir to Dostoyevsky. He belongs to the pantheon of world history. I pay homage to his memory,’ stated Sarkozy.