The Solzhenitsyn Files

"This is something of a curiosity. It was part of that rush of archival material that suddenly became available at the end of the Soviet period, and the Russian editors filtered through a mass of Politburo stuff concerning Solzhenitsyn and produced this intriguing book. You see, back in the 1970s, whenever any foreign journalists asked about Solzhenitsyn and what was happening to him, the official Soviet line was: “Look, you admire him as a writer, but do you really think the Soviet leadership is going to waste its time agonizing over one writer? Do you really think Brezhnev/Andropov is actually sitting around talking about a novelist?” That approach worked pretty well in the West because nobody could imagine the US President holding a meeting about what to do about Updike. But then came these archives and you’ve got Andropov and other leaders, phone conversations and transcripts of meetings, and they all are sitting around talking about Solzhenitsyn and what to do about him. The archives cover some of the scurrilous fabrications that came out concerning him (books and articles purportedly by friends denouncing him and smearing his reputation both morally and otherwise) but there’s no reference, unfortunately, to the ticklish issue of his attempted assassination in the early 1970s. Yes. One of the KGB officers responsible has been interviewed and has confirmed exactly what happened, so we do know for certain, yes."