Solzhenitsyn: Censor from another age

A Russian television station cancelled plans on Friday to air a documentary marking the 80th birthday of Nobel laureate and Soviet dissid...

A Russian television station cancelled plans on Friday to air a documentary marking the 80th birthday of Nobel laureate and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn after he objected.

The film, called The Chosen One, was to air on Russia’s RTR television on Friday, the 25th anniversary of the first publication of his renowned work, The Gulag Archipelago. But less than two hours before its scheduled broadcast, the station announced on its evening news that it had cancelled the show.

RTR said it had sent Solzhenitsyn a copy of the tape for review, but Solzhenitsyn said he had not seen the film and didn’t want it to air without his approval. Russia’s two other main television stations have also prepared documentaries to mark his birthday, which is December 11.

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The ORT television station showed the first part of its documentary, The Knot, on Friday. NTV will show its film, The Life of Solzhenitsyn, next week. Solzhenitsyn’s works, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, TheGulag Archipelago and Cancer Ward laid bare the cruelties and repressions of the Soviet system. The Gulag Archipelago was first published in Paris in 1973, and Solzhenitsyn was arrested and expelled from the Soviet Union the following year. He lived in Vermont, United States, for 18 years, then returned to Russia in 1994.

He enjoyed much more influence as a dissident than he does today. He is fiercely critical of post-Soviet Russia, but many find his proposed solutions to be overly conservative, nationalistic or irrelevant.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.