Countries & Cultures

Russian Students Get "Gulag" Order

TORREY CLARK, MOSCOW

THEAGE.COM.AU

September 11, 2009

ALEXANDER Solzhenitsyn's classic novel The Gulag Archipelago, once banned by Soviet authorities, will be mandatory reading in Russian schools.

Secondary school students will be required to study excerpts of the three-volume novel following a promise Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made to Solzhenitsyn's widow on the anniversary of his death.

Mr Putin, a former KGB officer Solzhenitsyn had praised for restoring Russia's authority in the world, initially called for the novel to be read at schools that focused on literature.

But Solzhenitsyn's wife, Natalia, urged Mr. Putin to have all students read the novel in the hope that it would ''build a fire in their hearts'', according to a transcript of their meeting in July on the Russian Education Ministry website.

Solzhenitsyn helped undermine the Soviet grip on power through his portrayals of dictator Josef Stalin's labor camps and political oppression. At least 15 million died in the camps or were executed for suspected disloyalty during Stalin's purges, according to the Russian human rights group Memorial.

Mr. Putin has sought to focus attention on the Soviet Union's role in winning World War II, while rebuffing criticism from the West and former Soviet republics. President Dmitry Medvedev in May created a commission to counter the ''falsification'' of history. Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945 for criticizing Stalin in a letter from the front, where he was serving in the Red Army. He was sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison camp. He was exiled in 1974.

Solzhenitsyn criticized Russia's first post-communist leader, Boris Yeltsin, and Mikhail Gorbachev, who restored Solzhenitsyn's citizenship and allowed the full Russian text of The Gulag Archipelago to be published in 1990.

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