One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was specifically mentioned in the Nobel Prize presentation speech when the Nobel Committee awarded Solzhenitsyn the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.[1][8][15]
Following the publication of One Day... Solzhenitsyn wrote four more books, three in 1963 and a fourth in 1966[8] which led to the controversy of his publications.[8] In 1968, Solzhenitsyn was accused by the Literary Gazette, a Soviet newspaper, of not following Soviet principles. The Gazette's editors also made claims that Solzhenitsyn was opposing the basic principles of the Soviet Union, his style of writing had been controversial with many Soviet literary critics[8] especially with the publication of One Day ... . This criticism made by the paper gave rise to further accusations that Solzhenitsyn had turned from a Soviet Russian into a Soviet enemy,[8] therefore he was branded as an enemy of the state, who, according to the Gazette, had been supporting non-Soviet ideological stances since 1967,[8] perhaps even longer. He, in addition, was accused of de-Stalinisation. The reviews were particularly damaging. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union in 1969.[8] He was arrested, then deported in 1974.[8]
The novella had sold over 95,000 copies after it was released[3] and throughout the 1960s. While Solzhenitsyn and his work originally received negative reviews, under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the book's mass publication undermines the influence of Josef Stalin on the Soviet Union. Critics of this action argue that it unleashed liberalization that would cause the publication of more radical works and eventually the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[16]
Vitaly Korotich wrote: "The Soviet Union was destroyed by information – and this wave started from Solzhenitsyn's One Day".[17]
