ABSTRACT
One of the many advantages of the sharashka was that prisoners could receive an unlimited number of letters, books, and parcels from home and could send letters out. There was also the comforting fact that the sharashka was situated on the very outskirts of Moscow. The location of Marfino was in fact an open secret to the Moscow wives, and Natalia subsequently went to the Ostankino Park on a number of occasions in the hope of glimpsing Solzhenitsyn through the wire. The Turkins had been pleased to welcome Natalia and offer her a home. They had shared her sense of shock and grief over Solzhenitsyn’s arrest, although they hardly knew him, had lent a sympathetic ear to her sorrows, and had helped her find her feet in this strange, hectic, and forbidding capital city. At their 1948 meeting Solzhenitsyn announced to Natalia an astounding coincidence.
