In an open casket, the body of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lies with military guard in a hall of the Academy of Sciences, before the funeral service and burial in Donskoi monastery on Wednesday. His One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was noted in the TLS of January 4, 1962, shortly after it was first published. Pre-publication extracts from Cancer Ward were featured in the TLS of November 4, 1968, with an editorial introduction carefully composed to give nothing away about how the typescript reached London: “These extracts came to us from a special correspondent in Europe and have been translated into English from a translation of the original Russian”.

The eventual discovery by the KGB of a typescript copy of the Gulag Archipelago led to Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974 for “actions against the state”. Few could have thought that by the time of his death he would be so honoured in his native country.

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