They came in a trickle rather than a flood, but raw emotions were never far from the surface as Russians paid their last respects to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn today.

Hundreds braved heavy rain in Moscow to file past the open coffin of the dissident writer, which was flanked by an honour guard of four soldiers in dress uniform at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The authorities had clearly prepared for more people, however, mindful perhaps of the thousands who queued outside the Christ the Saviour cathedral last year for the lying-in-state of Boris Yeltsin, the former Russian President.

Crowd barriers had been arranged around three sides of the academy to form a channel for mourners to queue, but the rain kept many away and those who came to pay their respects were able to walk into the memorial hall without waiting.

Times Archive, 1976: Warning to the West

We offer you the experience of our suffering; we would like you to accept it without having to pay the monstrous price of death and slavery

• Leading article: The warning and the hope

• Solzhenitsyn expelled from Russia

• Nobel award to disgraced writer

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The Nobel laureate's widow, Natalya, stood at the side of the coffin with family members as mourners laid flowers and bowed in respect. A large portrait of Solzhenitsyn next to a Russian flag dominated the rear of the hall.

Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's last leader, were among those who paid tribute to the man who exposed the horrors of the communist gulag. Solzhenitsyn died on Sunday, aged 89.

But it was ordinary Russians, some in tears, who told the story of Solzhenitsyn's real significance. The vast majority were pensioners in their sixties and seventies, for whom he had represented a beacon of truth and resistance to a Stalinist tyranny that had scarred many of their own families.

"My grandfather and many other relatives were in the gulag and it was very important for me that he opened up this world," said Yelena Vatianova, clutching carnations to lay at the foot of Solzhenitsyn's coffin. "He was an intellectual colossus, he did so much for Russia."

Yuri Trushin, 74, wiped away tears as he told The Times: "He was the second Tolstoy and the greatest man of truth concerning Russia's history in the 20th century. He gathered so much material on the experiences of people in the camps and opened our eyes to the terrible things that took place on our land."

Vladimir Kochetov, 56, said that he remembered reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as a 14-year-old boy after it was published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir. He said: "It was such a help for us. My mother's first husband was killed in the camps and that's why Solzhenitsyn is so important for our family.

"I have kept those pages of the journal with me all these years, even when it was forbidden to have them by the Soviet authorities. He will forever remain in my memory."

Svetlana Grebenschikova, 25, was among a small minority of young people who turned out to pay their respects. She said: "When I read The Gulag Archipelago, I realised that I was like a blind person. He really changed my understanding of what happened during that time.

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