Tributes honour Russian Gulag writer Solzhenitsyn

 

 

Nobel prize-winning Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who devoted his life to exposing the brutal Soviet Gulag, has died at the age of 89, bringing tributes from around the world on Monday August 4.

Recognisable in later life by his flowing beard and ascetic clothing, he had been frail for several years and died of heart failure late Sunday evening after going to bed at the end of a day’s work, his son Stepan told AFP.

“He had been ill many years, but nevertheless he was still able to work every day and he was of completely sound mind all this time, so his death, in fact, was sudden,” he said by telephone.

The author was working on corrections to a 30-volume set of collected works the day of his death, Stepan said, adding that the family would “treasure” the many condolences from people who knew his father.

Solzhenitsyn’s lying in state will take place on Tuesday ahead of his burial at the Donskoye cemetery in Moscow on Wednesday, Interfax news agency reported, citing a church official and a representative from the writer’s foundation.

Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 after depicting in harrowing detail the Soviet labour camps, where he spent eight years from 1945. He toiled obsessively to unearth the darkest secrets of Stalinist rule and his work ultimately dealt a crippling blow to the Soviet Union’s authority.

He was eventually expelled in 1974 for his anti-Soviet views. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent the family his condolences, and hailed Solzhenitsyn as “one of the greatest thinkers, writers and humanists” of the 20th century, Interfax reported.

Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Natalya, who is publishing his complete works, told Echo of Moscow radio that the writer lived “a difficult but happy life.” The Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev said Solzhenitsyn’s name will go down in Russian history.

Solzhenitsyn played a key role in undermining Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian regime, Gorbachev said. His works “changed the consciousness of millions of people, forcing them to think about past and present in a different way”.

Born in 1918 in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus in the bloody aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Solzhenitsyn was initially a loyal communist. But he was sentenced to eight years in the camps in 1945 for criticising Stalin in a letter to a friend.

He was released in February 1953, a few weeks before Stalin’s death and eventually became a maths teacher. He earned fame in 1962 with “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Published with official approval during the thaw under Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, its description of forced labour camps made a huge impact.

But another Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev banned his writings and Russians could only read clandestine editions of his work for more than 20 years.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970 but refused to travel to receive it for fear of not being allowed to return home. By then Solzhenitsyn was working on his massive labour camp portrait, “The Gulag Archipelago.” He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 after the authorities discovered manuscripts of the book.

After a spell in Switzerland he moved to a remote village in Vermont in the United States, where he devoted himself to his “Red Wheel” cycle, a fictionalised history of the run-up to the Revolution. During his exile, the world discovered a Solzhenitsyn who was critical of Western ways and called for moral renewal based on Christian values.