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”.

Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 after writing in harrowing detail about the system of Soviet labour camps in works such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago.

A project to publish Solzhenitsyn’s complete works in his homeland for the first time was begun in 2006. The author hinted at the time that he did not expect to live to see the 30-volume project completed in 2010.

The literary celebration would have been unthinkable in 1974, when Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union and stripped of his citizenship soon after the first part of The Gulag Archipelago appeared in the West. The three-volume work, which took a decade to complete, forced many Western sympathisers to revise their views of the Soviet regime.

Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in labour camps for criticising Stalin in letters to a schoolfriend in 1945 after serving in the army throughout the Second World War. On his release in 1953, he was sent into internal exile in Kazakhstan, where he developed cancer. His experiences formed the basis of the novelsThe First Circleand Cancer Ward. An edited version of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in the Soviet Union in 1962 during the cultural thaw under Nikita Khrushchev.

The censors rejected other manuscripts, however, as the KGB placed Solzhenitsyn under increasing scrutiny for “antiSoviet” activity. His Nobel Prize for Literature was denounced as an act of political hostility, but he continued to smuggle work out to the West while underground samizdat copies circulated in Russia.

The cellist Mstislav Rostropovich protested against Solzhenitsyn’s persecution and sheltered the writer in the early 1970s. His support attracted official harassment that forced Rostropovich to flee to Paris in 1974. Solzhenitsyn moved to Germany and Switzerland after his expulsion before settling in the US in 1976. Mikhail Gorbachev restored his citizenship in 1990 and he returned to Russia in 1994, where he professed himself shocked at the impoverished condition of the people.

He was strongly critical of the new Russian society that emerged from Communism, attacking corruption and calling for a return to traditional patriotism. He was noticeably warmer about Mr Putin, however, saying that he had taken steps to “save Russia’s statehood”. In a video message recorded in response to his award from Mr Putin, Solzhenitsyn said that he hoped his work would help Russia to avoid “destructive breakdowns” in future.

Days in the life of . . .

1941 Solzhenitsyn graduates from Rostov University with a degree in mathematics, before joining the army to fight in the Second World War, achieving the rank of captain

1945 Corresponding with a friend, he makes derogatory comments about Stalin. The letters are intercepted and he is arrested

1945-53 He serves eight years in detention camps, an experience that formed the basis of his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

1962 Following a relaxation of censorship, the novella is published in the USSR, on the personal permission of President Krushchev. It is one of the first Russian works to criticise the Stalinist regime

1970 Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Solzhenitsyn does not accept in person – fearing that he would not be let back into the USSR

1972 He smuggles out a Nobel speech describing a “Gulag Archipelago” where “it was my fate to survive, while others – perhaps with a greater gift and stronger than I – have perished”. Two years later he is expelled from the USSR

1990 With the crumbling of the old Soviet Union, Gorbachev restores Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship

1994 Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia

1998 Refuses state award from Boris Yeltsin, blaming him for the country’s ruinous economy