Challenge from Solzhenitsyn?

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33423, 3 January 1974, Page 9

Challenge from Solzhenitsyn?

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BERKELEY (California), January 2.

Publication of Alexander Solzenitsyn’s new book, detailing some of the grotesque crimes of Stalin-era officials, may well provoke the final confrontation between the Russian author and the Soviet Union Government, according to a University of California professor.

‘•They’ve had many confrontations before, and this could lead to Solzhenitsyn’s exile, or some other form of reprisal,” Dr Martin Malia. a professor of Russian history, said in Berkeley last night.

“I think he’s taking a very deliberate risk to force a show-down.” Dr Malia described the new book, “The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-56,” as a political work of great importance, and the kind of challenge that the Soviet Union Government w’buld not ignore. “Solzhenitsyn probably knew this when he decided to publish’ it,” he said The book details tortures and horrors of the Russian prison camps, and demands that the officials responsible be arrested and punished, as were the Nazi war criminals. “Gulag” was published in Paris in the Russian language three days ago, and will soon appear in English, French, and other languages. Dr Malia said that now that the Soviet Union Government had subscribed to the International Copyright Convention, it might try to prosecute Solzhenitsyn for violations of that accord: it has taken the stand that it holds a monopoly over any works by a Soviet Union citizen in a foreign country. Mr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winner, smuggled the book out of Russia, as he had done with previous works. It quotes 272 camp prisoners in describing the brutalities of the K.G.8., which, he believes, should be punished along with Communist Party and Government officials responsible for the deaths of millions in prisons and relocation camps.