Moscow - Dissident Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was
laid to rest with a three-gun salute on Wednesday in a service
attended by President Dmitry Medvedev at Moscow's 16th-century
Donskoy Monastery.
The funeral procession of several hundred was led by goose-
stepping guards, who carried a black-and-white portrait of Russia's
literary great, celebrated for his unflinching documentation of the
horrors of the Soviet prison camps.
Solzhenistyn's widow and son followed holding hands.
At his grave, white-gowned priests chanted and swung thuribles, or
incense-burners, over his open casket.
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 there
The Nobel writer said he felt 'many spiritual links' to Donskoy
monastery which hosts the graves of many other Russian dissidents
writers and artists.
A steady stream of mourners filed through the small rose-walled
church holding pairs of long-stemmed flowers to pay tribute to
Solzhenitsyn during the funeral.
Solzhnitsyn, a striking figure with full Orthodox beard who is
remembered as Russia's moral conscience for his exposes of the
brutality of the gulags where he spent eight years, died Sunday aged
89.
'Solzhenitsyn's role was absolutely unique. It seemed there were
moments in his life when he threw down a challenge to destiny itself
and destiny receded before him,' said human rights activist Vladimir
Lukin said at the funeral.
The iconic writer was a firm Russian patriot, who 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 Gulag Archipelago
and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he refused to leave the
country fearing he would be barred from returning.
Three years later, however, the KGB redoubled its efforts to
silence public mention of the gulags, and he was expelled.
He was welcomed as a hero on his homecoming in 1994 and awarded
Russia's highest accolade by former president Vladimir Putin 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 final years, he criticized
society's lack of Orthodox Christian values.
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