How were Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrey Sakharov affected by the KGB?

The KGB systematically harassed, arrested, and exiled intellectuals and human rights advocates deemed disloyal to the Soviet regime, with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrey Sakharov serving as two of its most prominent targets.1

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

After Solzhenitsyn emerged as a vocal critic of government repression, the KGB subjected him to overt harassment and denied him official publication of his works, forcing him to circulate them clandestinely via samizdat. In 1973, the KGB seized a manuscript of his major work, The Gulag Archipelago. Following its publication abroad, he was arrested, charged with treason, stripped of his citizenship, and expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.23

Andrey Sakharov

As a result of his activism for human rights and his criticism of Soviet political repression, Sakharov faced persistent official censure and isolation. In 1980, the Soviet government stripped him of his honors and the KGB enforced his internal exile to the closed city of Gorky to silence his opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan. He remained in exile until 1986, when he was released by Mikhail Gorbachev.43