Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn Was a Russian Patriot

Wall Street Opinion Journal | Robert Conquest | August 8, 2005

Those of us who had long been concerned to expose and resist Stalinism, in the West as in the USSR, learned much from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I met him in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1974, soon after he was expelled from the Soviet Union — the result of his novel, “The Gulag Archipelago,” being published in Paris. He was personally pleasant; I have a photograph of the two of us, he holding a Russian edition of my book, “The Great Terror,” with evident approbation. He asked if I would translate a “little” poem of his. Of course I agreed. [Read more…]

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Memory Eternal

The Times | Tony Halpin

Last struggle is over for Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

He was the conscience of a nation whose writings exposed the horrors of the Communist Gulag and galvanised Russian opposition to the tyranny of the Soviet Union.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s long struggle for his beloved Russia ended last night at his home in Moscow, 14 years after he had returned in triumph from exile imposed by the Soviet regime that he had helped to bring down. His son Stepan said that the Nobel laureate had suffered heart failure, aged 89.

The former dissident had been in failing health for some years. He lived long enough to be fêted by a Kremlin that had once condemned him to slave labour. The former Russian president, Vladimir Putin, once a KGB officer, travelled to Solzhenitsyn’s home to present him with the State Prize for humanitarian achievement last year, thanking him for “all your work for the good of Russia”. [Read more…]

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