RUSSIA:ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author who bowed to no political leader, will be buried according to his last wishes in the graveyard of Moscow's ancient Donskoy monastery.
The Orthodox funeral for Solzhenitsyn will take place in the monastery's cathedral tomorrow after an opportunity today for the public to pay their respects when the open coffin will be displayed at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Thousands are expected to stream past the body, although it will not be an official lying-in-state. The writer, who exposed the crimes of the Stalinist system but also criticised Russia's post-communist leaders, will avoid burial alongside former Kremlin leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Boris Yeltsin in the Novodevichy cemetery.
The graveyard of the 16th century Donskoy monastery is the last resting place of monks, poets and philosophers. Some victims of Joseph Stalin's secret police are also buried there.
Solzhenitsyn, author of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward and Gulag Archipelago, died aged 89 of heart failure on Sunday night. His wife Natalya said his life ended in the way he had hoped. "He wanted to die in the summer and he died in the summer," she said. "He wanted to die at home and he died at home. Aleksandr Isayevich lived a difficult but happy life." President Dmitry Medvedev said in a letter of condolence yesterday: "The death of this great man and one of the major thinkers, writers and humanists of the 20th century is an irreparable loss for Russia and for the world as a whole."
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, described Solzhenitsyn as a "man of unique destiny whose name will remain in Russia's history". - ( Guardian service)