SOLZHENITSYN OPTIMISTIC

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33464, 20 February 1974, Page 13

SOLZHENITSYN OPTIMISTIC

/ By

FRANK CREPEAU.

of the. Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.)

ZURICH. February 19. After fighting a war, Stalinist prison camps, cancer, years of denunciations by Soviet authorities, a charge of treason and expulsion from Russia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn says he is still an optimist.

He wants to gather his family around him, find a quiet place, go on writing in exile and some day return to Russia. And in his first interview since he was arrested and shoved aboard a plane l for shipment out of the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn yesterday fiercely defended his right to live in his homeland.

“I know for myself that my right to Russian earth is no less than the right of those who had the audacity to physically throw me out."

he said in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press.

Though he still wears the shapeless brown wool coat issued to him in a Moscow prison a week ago when he was deported, Solzhenitsyn appeared cheerful and undaunted.

He wants his family to join him and he wants Soviet authorities to release his literary archives so that he can continue writing abroad.

“No matter how it hurts, no matter how bitter it is to start this work here,” he said, “I will carry it on, here.” He said that the direction of his future work would depend on whether the Russians allowed his family to bring with them what Solzhenitsyn termed a “rich collection” of materials that will serve as a basis for further volumes of the history of the Russian revolution he started in the book “August 1914.”

He said that confiscation of the material would amount to “spiritual murder.” Solzehnitsyn said that he was too old at 55 to collect the material again, and loss of his archives would mean abandonment of the series of books.

“But then my remaining years and strength, instead of being directed to Russian history, will be directed towards the Soviet present for which 1 will need no archives,” he said.

Though planning a new life in the West, Solzhenitsyn has not abandoned hope of returning to Russia. “I am an optimist from birth and do not consider my exile as final,” he said.

A day spent with him in Zurich indicated that there was no sign that Solzhenitsyn would sink into the anomymity the Soviet press hopefully predicts once the sensation of his expulsion dies down.

He visited a bank, then a house where Lenin planned the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

! Cameramen dogged his footsteps, and he showed his ianger by shouting in .German, ‘‘Leave me alone, I am also a human being.” On meeting an Associated Press journalist he knew from Moscow, Solzhenitsyn called a taxi and they went to a local middle-class restaurant for a meal of minestrone, stewed veal, salad and Italian red wine.

Solzhenitsyn ate with gusto, consuming slice after slice of bread and said that he wanted to give an interview because there were a few things he wanted to say. Solzhenitsyn’s present, sanctuary is the neat thirdfloor apartment of his lawyer, Mr Fritz Heeb. His possession are few. His Soviet gaolers took away his heavy worn sheepskin coat that he put on when the police came for him. They stripped him in gaol and then dressed him and shipped him out. They returned only a cross he wore around his neck and his Russian wrist watch.

Right now, Solzhenitsyn is concerned about when his family can join him and where he can settle. His wife, their three small

I children, a step-son, and his 'mother-in-law plan to come as soon as he finds a place to live. “If one is to believe the statement of members of the Soviet Government. my family will be let go without hindrance,” he said. “But without my presence, for two women with four children it is not easy to liquidate an existence of many years, to pack up, to get moving, to find the moment when none of the children is ill.” Solzhenitsyn is still considering his future home. He said that he has invitations from several countries and expressed special interest in Switzerland and Scandinavia. “I am most sincerely grateful to all those who invited me.” he said. “The decision will depend on where I will be able to find in a short time rather spacious, calm quarters with some land convenient for work and for health.” He noted that he had always “lived without a house, cramped. I could not reconcile working conditions with family life. In the years to come at least 1 would like to achieve that.”