MOSCOW, Russia - August 4, 2008 -
Russians on Monday mourned Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author and dissident
whose criticism of the tyranny of Soviet rule made him one of the bravest
figures of the 20th century.
Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel literature laureate, died of heart failure late on Sunday in his Moscow home. He was 89.
On Monday, a chorus of voices across the world expressed grief at the death of a man whose struggle exposed the horror of Josef Stalin's camps and made him the conscience of Russia.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, described Solzhenitsyn as a "man of unique destiny whose name will remain in Russia's history."
"He was one of the first people who spoke up about the inhumanity of Stalin's regime with a full voice, and about the people who lived through this but were not broken," Gorbachev, told Interfax news agency.
A funeral service will take place at the medieval Donskoi monastery in Moscow on Wednesday and Solzhenitsyn will be buried there later that day in accordance with his will, said a Russian Orthodox church spokesman.