MOSCOW, August 4 (Itar-Tass) - A memorial service for the late Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was held at Moscow’s Donskoy Monastery on August 3, to observe the fifth anniversary of his death. More than fifty Solzhenitsyn’s fans, family members, close relatives, friends, representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia and Russian emigrants from foreign countries gathered by the writer’s grave.
Leonid Kishkovsky, an American priest, used to meet Solzhenitsyn in the United States.
“I could not but come. I had arrived in Russia on a different business but I put off everything when I heard about the memorial service and so I am here at the Donskoy Monastery,” Father Leonid told Itar-Tass.
Actor Alexander Filippenko said that a literary and music evening devoted to the 95th anniversary of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s birth would take place at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in December. “Jointly with Natalya Solzhenitsyna we are working on a concept for this evening,” the actor went on to say.
“Perhaps, we are going to use Shostakovich’s music. Solzhenitsyn’s works are so tense that, as his widow Natalya puts it, we can relax while listening to Shostakovich’s music,” Filippenko went on to say. Filippenko has been reading Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day of Ivan Denisovich” at the Praktika (Practice) Theatre for five years. He also prepares other literary compositions.
There were many young faces at the memorial service, including Kirill Tyutyunnikov, a Moscow State University student.
“At first I read the Gulag Archipelago, then In the First Circle and other stories and novels. Historical storylines attracted me most in the Red Wheel, which has lots of literary insertions. He himself was in labor camps and he lived through all those things,” the student said. Natalya Solzhenitsyna invited the student to attend a permanent seminar at the Russkoye Zarubezhye Foundation.
“Lyudmila Saraskina, Solzhenitsyn’s autobiographer, will conduct the next meeting,” Solzhenitsyn’s widow said. She also added that she had started publishing the unfinished works of her late husband.
“We have published the first issue of ‘Solzhenitsyn’s Notebooks’,” Natalya said.