Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is read his sentence by the NKVD: eight years in a correctional camp. He exclaims, “But this is terrible! Eight years!!! Why?” His words ring hollow and useless. Other acquaintances of his have received 25 years (Stalin’s quarter). After some hesitation, he signs: he doesn’t know what else to do. After serving his sentence, he is released and immediately sentenced to perpetual confinement. In the Gulag, he develops a tumor, which is removed and then metastasized. He survives, against all odds. He will be freed by Khrushchev in 1956. In 1958, he conceives the beginning of the work that will become The Gulag Archipelago. In May 1968, he manages to have the microfilm of the book delivered to the West. Shortly afterwards he also met the physicist Andrei Sakharov, and Natalya Svetlova, a young mathematician who would become his second wife.
