Widow mourns Solzhenitsyn, but most Russians are unmoved - Telegraph

Widow mourns Solzhenitsyn, but most Russians are unmoved - Telegraph: "Widow mourns Solzhenitsyn, but most Russians are unmoved
Russians yesterday filed past the coffin of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the former dissident and Nobel laureate who became the conscience of a nation that did not want to listen."

This is the most accurate reporting of late on Solzhenitsyn's place in the Russian consciousness.

I recall reading "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" as a teen in highschool, and it disturbed me. The West loved Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but every native Russian I have met has responded in a blase manner to his work. So what that he described Soviet life in such detail--did it inspire? No, it simply reinforced the grim grey reality of the USSR. Most former-Soviets read to escape or to ponder the bigger questions of life. Why experience the sadness of Soviet-ness, over and again?

I do profoundly believe that Mister Solzhenitsyn's true fans, those in the West, and in the US, would have given the writer a grand funeral. Perhaps, with time lessening the impact of the USSR, Russia will come to hold him in the same esteem.

RIP.

Story published in May 2007

I recently had another story about my time in Russia published. It's called Mortal Coil, and is about a woman's (a friend of ours) funeral.

Did you know Russians are very superstitious?