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From The Times

April 8, 2008

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russia's loudest recluse

Penny Wark

Typically, it was Natalia Solzhenitsyn who has given the latest insight into her husband, Aleksandr. At 89, he is working frantically to complete the 30 volumes of his collected works, she says. He is frail, can barely walk and hasn't left his Moscow house for five years, but he continues to write, determined to continue to disseminate his views on repression in the Soviet Union.

Famously reclusive, Russia's greatest living novelist has only engaged with the media on his own terms and has often used his family as a conduit. He must know that he is nothing without public attention, but his instinct has always been to live within his work and to have a public presence only for his words; he has assiduously avoided the cult of personality that could so easily have engulfed him after his Nobel Literature Prize in 1970. This leaves us knowing everything about his loathing of communism and his distaste for Western secularism and materialism, and little about him as a man, other than his taste for gloom and his autocracy. In photographs he looks dour, Victorian almost, a throwback to an era when ideas were respected for their intellectual weight rather than marketing potential.

He was born in Kislovodsk, six months after his father, an army officer, was killed in a hunting accident. He was decorated for his own service as a Red Army captain in the Second World War but was soon accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and by July 1945 he had been sentenced to eight years in a labour camp.

His experiences gave him the material for his writing. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the first of his unremittingly doom-ridden but powerful works, and The Gulag Archipelago told of his time in labour camps under Stalin; Cancer Ward related to the illness from which he made a full recovery.

He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and spent 18 years living on a fenced 50-acre estate in Cavendish, Vermont. His three sons became Americanised but he refused to embrace American culture and barely learnt to speak English - his wife negotiated with the local community. As a result of his exile, and the banning of his books, a generation of Russians grew up unfamiliar with his work.

He has tried to correct that since 1990, when the Soviet Union was close to collapse and Boris Yeltsin restored his citizenship. He returned, accompanied, bizarrely, by a BBC film crew as he rolled in, through Siberia, on a luxury train and has dedicated his time since to his mission. His wife, 20 years his junior, a gifted mathematician and a former Olympic rower, remains the only person he trusts to type and edit his work, and the first volumes have already been published. Russia is reading him again, she says with evident satisfaction, and that is clearly her husband's answer to those who regard him as yesterday's man.

I still find it a shame that the vast majority of people that I know of have not heard of Solzhenitsyn or of his works. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an supurb novel, especially when rightly placed in its context. It is worth remembering that although he didn't learn English whilst in the US he was forcefully exiled from the Soviet Union. It is hard to be critical of him for this!

Mark Hurst, Leicester,

Gulag Archipelago was a great book to read â€“ it really helps one to appreciate what we have got in life and be more relaxed and happy for it.

Daniel K888, Melbourne , Australia

Gulag Archipelago, the greatest book ever written outside the Bible. Should be mandatory reading, especially on the European continent.

Peter, London, UK

Solzhenitsyn's three sons speak excellent English. In Vermont they attended local schools and were very much integrated into the American way of life, whilst retaining their Russian identity, thanks to the untiring efforts of their parents.

Richard Tempest, Urbana, Illinois, USA

Solzhenitzyn is unquestianbly one of the most important and influential writers - and personalities - of the last century. I was given "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" for my fifteenth birthday (read it the same day) and it profoundly changed my view of the world. Solzhenitzyn continues to address the central moral and intellectual issue of our times - the nature of the Soviet Regime.

Arnold Ward, Weybridge, Surrey, UK

This tells us all we need to know about the man:

"He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and spent 18 years living on a fenced 50-acre estate in Cavendish, Vermont. His three sons became Americanised but he refused to embrace American culture and barely learnt to speak English - his wife negotiated with the local community."

He lived for 18 years in a foreign country and did not have the decency to appreciate his host when his home country exiled him. From this I postulate he is a chauvinist of the worst kind, insular, without an open mind and small petty man.

James, London,

Good on you sir! I'm ready to read your books all over again!

Christina Summers, Brighton, England

Russians have been reading his books all the time. The book stores in Russia all sell his books, as well as the Internet stores. One can also download some of his books for free at www.lib.ru

Oleg, Toronto, Canada