In March 1953, having served his sentence, Solzhenitsyn suffered the further torment of being diagnosed with what was believed to be terminal cancer. Faced with such suffering and the imminent prospect of death, he made a final embrace of Christianity, becoming a convert to Russian Orthodoxy, a decision which marked the most important pivotal point in his life. If he had died, he would have become one of those unrecognized millions of heroes of whom later generations would know nothing, another forgotten victim of twentieth century tyranny. As it was, he made a remarkable, some might say miraculous, recovery
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/12/solzhenitsyn-centenary-celebration-joseph-pearce.html