Original: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had first-hand experience in the Soviet labor camps called the Gulag , having been imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for writing a derogatory comment in a letter to a fellow officer about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin , whom he called '' the whiskered one '' .
Simplified: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ( I Denisovich himself ) had first-hand experience in the Soviet labor camps called the Gulag , having been imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for writing a derogatory comment in a letter to a fellow officer about the conduct of the war by Stalin .