The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) was born into the first generation of postrevolutionary Soviet Russians and grew up with no experience or memories of the czarist empire. He served as an officer in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), as the Soviets called their defense against Nazi invasion during World War II, and received the Order of the Red Star medal for his tactical achievements as a captain of artillery in East Prussia. After witnessing units of the Red Army perpetrating war crimes on German civilians, he became distressed over the morality of his country’s conduct of the war and expressed his concerns in letters to his friends. Soviet military censors intercepted Solzhenitsyn’s letters, and he was arrested in February 1945 and incarcerated in Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison in May of that year.