On Dec. 28, 1793, Thomas Paine was arrested in France for treason. The American patriot and author of the revolutionary pamphlet, Common Sense, had traveled to Paris to assist in the French Revolution. Originally, Paine was welcomed and given honorary citizenship. His book against royalty, The Rights of Man, was popular with the leaders of the revolution. However, Paine was a strong opponent of the death penalty and was vocal against the revolutionaries’ use of the guillotine. Paine was released in November 1794.
On Dec. 28, 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago was published in Paris. The book about the police-state system in the Soviet Union from the time of the Bolshevik Revolution to 1956 was an instant success in the West, but Soviet officials were livid and on February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his citizenship, and deported.