Moscow - The funeral was being held for dissident Soviet
writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Wednesday ahead of his burial at
Moscow's 16th century Donskoy Monastery.
Several hundred people crowded the vaulted church where white-
gowned priests chanted and swung thuribles, or incense-burners, over
his open coffin.
Solzhenitsyn, remembered as Russia's moral conscience for his
unflinching exposes on the horrors of the Soviet prison camps, died
Sunday aged 89.
His widow Natalya wore a black beret for the service and stood
with Solzhenitsyn's son, other friends and officials, holding candles
in a half arc around the bier.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev attended the service ahead of
Solzhenitsyn's burial at 12:30 pm (0830 GMT).
A devout Russian Orthodox Christian, Solzhenitsyn chose Donskoy
Monastery as his final resting place five years ago, asking special
permission from the Moscow Patriarchy to be buried alongside the many
other Russian dissidents and artists there.
The Nobel writer, distinguishable in his last years for his full
Orthodox beard, was a firm Russian patriot, and prayed to be buried
at home during his long years of exile.
When he won recognition in 1970 for his monumental documentation
of the Soviet Union's forced labour camps in the The Gulag
Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he refused to
leave the country fearing he would be barred from returning.
But in the 1970s, the KGB redoubled its efforts to silence public
mention of the camps where Solzhenitsyn spent eight years, and he was
expelled from his homeland.
On his homecoming in 1994, former president Vladimir Putin awarded
Solzhenitsyn Russia's highest accolade in a pomp-filled Kremlin
ceremony honouring his devotion to the 'motherland.'
But the return was also a shock to the former Soviet writer who
hardly recognized his country in the newly wealthy nation, and, in
rare public appearances during his last years, he criticized
society's lack of Orthodox Christian values.
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