ABSTRACT
It was solzhenitsyn’s fate to launch all his major books after Ivan Denisovich into a critical vacuum. Frightened by the idea of booking Solzhenitsyn into a local hospital, the friend managed to get him to the nearest railway station and put him in a sleeper for Moscow. It was now that the accident led to unforeseen consequences. In November 1971 his condition had deteriorated so seriously that he had been readmitted to the Kremlin Hospital, and his death came on the night of 18 December. News of his death was prominently featured in all the main Soviet newspapers, and the official obituary listed nearly all his achievements as a poet, public figure, and editor. In death, as in life, he was pursued by the hostility and vindictiveness of the Writers’ Union and its satraps. It was thus a bitter and disgraceful irony that in death, according to immutable Soviet custom, his body, too, was given over to his enemies.
