MOSCOW HOMECOMING
GREETED BY 5,000, SOLZHENITSYN ENDS TRIP WITH RENEWED ATTACK

Author: By Fred Kaplan, Globe Staff

Date: Friday, July 22, 1994
Page: 2
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN

The Nobel Prize-winning author, who was kicked out of his country 20 years ago for his harsh attacks against the Soviet regime, arrived two months ago in Vladivostok, the Far Eastern corner of Russia, and then crossed the country by train in a 5,700-mile, 56-day journey.

Last night, in a 15-minute speech, he kept up his attack against nearly all of Russia's political factions, especially President Boris N. Yeltsin's reform regime.

"I have concluded Russia is in a very serious condition," he said. ''There are groans resounding across the country. . . . Nobody expected the way out of Communism would be painless, but nobody expected it to be so painful. . . . The government is not fulfilling its duties."

Solzhenitsyn said, as he has before, that he will not run for political office. However, he made it clear that he wants his voice to play some political role.

"I've met plenty of healthy souls," he said. "Many of them are in doubt. They don't know whom to follow, with whom to be united. . . . I will help as much as I can, if I am given the chance. . . . I will remain a writer; my role is to speak out."

Last night, on the podium just off the train platform, Solzhenitsyn, 75, acted the politician. He beamed at the applauding crowd and clenched his hands above his head in triumph. A greeting committee, which shared the podium, included Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, former Ambassador to the United States Vladimir Lukin and the human-rights activist Sergei Kovalev.

Gleb Yakunin, a former dissident-priest and now a liberal parliamentarian, was also on the committee. He told reporters just before Solzhenitsyn's train pulled in: "If he falls into nationalist extremism, he has a chance of becoming a Russian Khomeini. If he doesn't, he may be a moral leader."

Ever since Solzhenitsyn arrived, politicians have tried to recruit him to their cause. Yeltsin sent him a telegram after he went to Vladivostok; the president's spokesman said yesterday that the two will meet soon. Yeltsin's chief foe and former vice president, Alexander Rutskoi, has pointed out similarities between his and Solzhenitsyn's views. Communist leaders expressed admiring sentiments.

The writer has accepted an invitation to address the parliament in October.

Only Vladimr Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist, broke the pattern, telling the news service Itar-Tass that Solzhenitsyn should "go back" to the West. ''We don't need any emigrants who sat there for 20 years and slandered our people."

Solzhenitsyn has criticized Zhirinovsky many times since coming back, calling him "an evil caricature of a Russian patriot."

Solzhenitsyn's own views have been nationalistic as well. He has called for some kind of unification of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, saying they are all really the same country. He has called for the protection of 25 million Russian nationals living in the former republics of the Soviet Union. He has denounced the intrusion of foreign words into the Russian language.

In an article to be published this month in Novy Mir magazine, which the
Globe obtained yesterday, he goes so far as to say that many Western politicians are actively interested in exploiting Russia's current weakness and denounces Radio Liberty for its "persistent pushiness" on this score.

An editor of the magazine said Solzhenitsyn wrote the essay while he was living in Cavendish, Vt.

On Wednesday night, in Yaroslavl, Solzhenitsyn told a town meeting, "I came with a very sad, dark idea of the country. It has been confirmed."

The newspaper Moscow Times reported that one man in the audience, skeptical of Solzhenitsyn's moralizing, said: "I must quote the harsh lines of the poet and bard Alexander Galich: 'The most frightening thing of all is someone who says he knows the right way to live.' "

Solzhenitsyn heatedly replied: "Galich was just not thinking when he wrote that. We have to know how to live. If we spit at those who know . . . then we will be nothing but a herd of sheep."

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