Smash hit

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, restored his citizenship in 1990 and he returned to Russia from the United States in 1994. Solzhenitsyn attacked the corruption and chaos of the new Russia under President Yeltsin but he never regained the influence that he had enjoyed in exile.

Solzhenitsyn became an increasingly peripheral figure in his final years and attracted criticism from some human rights activists for his support of President Putin’s efforts to restore Russia’s prestige. Mr Putin presented Solzhenitsyn with Russia’s highest honour, the State Prize, last year, thanking him for “all your work for the good of Russia”. As with the lying in state on Tuesday, the overwhelming majority of mourners at yesterday’s funeral were elderly people who could remember the impact of Solzhenitsyn’s books on the Soviet system. Valeri Borshchev, a human rights lawyer, said: “The totalitarian regime fell thanks in large part to him. Thanks to him, the people understood that they themselves could oppose evil.”

The leader of the banned National Bolshevik party, Eduard Limonov, was among mourners who lit a candle for Solzhenitsyn as the service was taking place. It was probably the closest that Mr Limonov, one of the leaders of the anti-Putin movement The Other Russia, and President Medvedev had ever been to each other. But the politics of post-Soviet Russia were set aside for the day as one of the country’s 20th-century greats was laid to rest.

Ekaterina Markova, a writer and friend of Solzhenitsyn, said: “Solzhenitsyn served only God. Not the Government, not democracy, not even America. Only God, that’s why he was a free person.”

Times Archive 1976: Alexander Solzhenitsyn's warning to the West

We, the oppressed peoples of Russia, watch with anguish the enfeeblement of Europe

• Leading article: The warning and the hope

• Nobel award to disgraced writer

• Solzhenitsyn expelled from Russia

Related Links

• Putin leads tributes to Solzhenitsyn

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Multimedia

• Pictures: Solzhenitsyn

Among artists and dissidents

Graves in the Donskoi monastery include:

1834 Italian Neo-Classical architect Joseph Bové

1856 Philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev, who was censored for his outspoken criticism of Russia

1882 Vasili Perov, the Russian Realist painter

1883 Ivan Turgenev, right, the author of Fathers and Sons

1911 Vasili Klyuchevsky, credited with bringing an economic and geographical dimension to the understanding of Russia’s history

1921 Nikolai Zhukovsky, first scientist to explain aerodynamic lift mathematically

1940 Vsevolod Meyerhold, dynamic theatre director who was shot by the Stalin regime

Source: www.muar.ru

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