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Solzhenitsyn Laid to Rest in Moscow
BY KTM Metro reporter in Kathmandu
August 08: Celebrated Russian Rebel writer and Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at the age of 89 after a prolonged illness. He was laid to rest after a funeral service held at Moscow's historic Donskoi monastery. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin joined the Nobel laureate's family and friends for the service in the monastery's cathedral.
In 1945 he ridiculed Stalin in a letter to a friend. The then-Soviet Regime considered it as a great crime against the State and sentenced young Solzhenitsyn to eight years in prison. However, the Soviet administration did not release him from the jail even after he had served the full term of the sentence, rather sent him to Kazakhstan. He memorized his writings in prison, as the Soviet Regime did not permit pens and papers to the prisoners.
In the early sixties, following Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, he published his largely autobiographical book: One-Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. Solzhenitsyn became a celebrity after its publication. After the fall of Khrushchev from power, the Soviet intelligence Agency KGB kept Solzhenitsyn under its strict surveillance again. However, he managed to get his novels: The First Circle and Cancer Ward get published abroad.
In 1970 the Nobel Academy awarded him a Nobel Prize for literature but he did go to Stockholm to receive the prize, as he feared of the Soviet Regime not allowing him to return to his motherland. In 1974, the Soviet Regime forced him to leave his home country. In 1994, he returned to his homeland after the demise of the Soviet Union. On August 03, 2008, he died after long illness.
All his books exposed the brutality of the Soviet Regime and fueled the ending of the Soviet Union in early 1990s.
