Dissident writer Solzhenitsyn laid to rest (1st Lead)

Aug 6, 2008, 9:53 GMT

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.