August 05, 2008	Tuesday	Sha'aban 2, 1429

MOSCOW, Aug 4: Nobel prize-winning Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who devoted his life to exposing the brutal Soviet Gulag, has died at the age of 89, bringing tributes from around the world on Monday.

Recognisable in later life by his flowing beard and ascetic clothing, he had been frail for several years and died of heart failure late Sunday evening after going to bed at the end of a day’s work, his son Stepan told AFP.

“He had been ill many years, but nevertheless he was still able to work every day and he was of completely sound mind all this time, so his death, in fact, was sudden,” he said by telephone.

The author was working on corrections to a 30-volume set of collected works the day of his death, Stepan said, adding that the family would “treasure” the many condolences from people who knew his father.

Solzhenitsyn’s lying in state will take place on Tuesday ahead of his burial at the Donskoye cemetery in Moscow on Wednesday, Interfax news agency reported, citing a church official and a representative from the writer’s foundation.

Some mourners left flowers by the wooden fence outside the dacha where he lived in the Moscow suburb of Troitse-Lykovo, an AFP photographer said.

Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 after depicting in harrowing detail the Soviet labour camps, where he spent eight years from 1945.

He toiled obsessively to unearth the darkest secrets of Stalinist rule and his work ultimately dealt a crippling blow to the Soviet Union’s authority.

He was eventually expelled in 1974 for his anti-Soviet views.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent the family his condolences, and hailed Solzhenitsyn as “one of the greatest thinkers, writers and humanists” of the 20th century, Interfax reported.

Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Natalya, who is publishing his complete works, told Echo of Moscow radio that the writer lived “a difficult but happy life”. The Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev said Solzhenitsyn’s name will go down in Russian history.

“Until the end of his days he fought for Russia not only to move away from its totalitarian past but also to have a worthy future, to become a truly free and democratic country. We owe him a lot,” Gorbachev told Interfax.—AFP