Russian writer and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn (89) has died.

The Nobel laureate and former dissident died of heart failure yesterday, the writer's son Stepan said.

Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 after writing harrowing works about the Soviet Union's system of labour camps.

He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, thereby becoming Cold War icon.

He wrote about life in the Gulag with harrowing detail in his most celebrated works: "One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich", "The First Circle" and "The Gulag Archipelago".

In June last year, then Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Solzhenitsyn with the State Prize, Russia's highest honour, praising his devotion to the "fatherland" in a lavish ceremony at the Kremlin.