You're entitled to your opinion, certainly, but that is one of the oddest things I've heard in a long time. Russians usually don't like Solzhenitsyn because of his style, which is heavy and often bad (to my mind). I have found that TV miniseries of his books that follow dialogue exactly have been the best format for taking in his ideas, which are often very interesting, because they strip away the style that I don't like.

Don't forget that, for foreign books, a translation can make or break a book. My opinion is that translation is a necessary evil at best, and so if I can avoid translations, I will. I recently read (and reviewed on the Books board) Madame Bovary and Siddhartha in their original languages, two books which suffer from accusations of bad translations, and with Bovary at least I could see why it might be difficult to translate without losing a lot.

If you're going to read a book, go on amazon and root around the comments about the different translations for at least five minutes and you'll see which translations work the best.

Having said that, have you read Lermontov's Hero of Our Time? Based on your choices, I think you would like it. Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (recently discussed on the Books board) is another good one to try. I do not think you will enjoy Dostoevsky. Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is a book that I would recommend due to its content - it's very good - but it's a story in poem form and poetry is extremely hard to translate. Pushkin's Captain's Daughter is a good prose work. In all cases that I've recommended, the most background you'd need would be about one or two quick wikipedia article reads.