Russian’s book 'folklore’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33453, 7 February 1974, Page 13

Russian’s book 'folklore’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) i PARIS. Feb. 6. | The controversial book on Soviet Union labour camps by the Nobel Prizewinner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is described as “folklore”, by his enstranged wife in an interview in Paris today. Mrs Solzhenitsyn is quoted as having told the Moscow correspondent of the Conservative newspaper, “Figaro,” that “Gulag Archipelago 1918-56” was based on unreliable information. She said that she was still living with Mr Solzhenitsyn when he wrote the book, and that she typed part of it. Thev parted in 1970. The “Figaro” correspondent said that he had easily obtained authority to see the writer’s enstranged wife,

Natalya, at her home ini Ryazan, outside Moscow, which she had shared with! Mr Solzhenitsyn. The correspondent added that she was now writing her memoirs in co-operation with the Staterun press agency 7, Novosti. Observers in Paris regard Mrs Solyhenitsyn’s remarks as a departure from previous Soviet criticism of the author, and "Figaro” suggests a new official line, aimed at defusing the controversy over the book in which the authorities may wish to drop, or at least re-orient their campaign against Mr Solzhenitsyn. His former wife is quoted as saying: "The subject of ‘Gulag Archipelago,’ to my way of thinking—as I felt at the moment when he was writing it—is not, in fact, the life of the country-, and not even the life of the camps, but the fokelore of the camps.”

“Gulag Archipelago” is an impression of the Soviet prison system, based on

inmates’ testimony and personal experience: in a preface, the author describes it as “a sort of panorama, rather than a history.” His former wife emphasises this point, adding that the book’s original title was "An Experiment in Artistic Research.” “Alexander had the peculiarity of believing his first impressions,” she is quoted as saying. “He believes in intuition. That is why the information he received from people he believed was accepted by him as absolute reality. “Information always contains a portion of inexactitude, and even, sometimes, misinformation. It sometimes happens that people finish by believing the stories they are telling. “Alexander never wanted to publish in the West, only in the Soviet Union. I think that publishing abroad changed his fate, and plunged him back into the camp mentality.”