Solzhenitsyn's last journey

By James Rodgers
BBC News, Moscow

"To a great Russian," read one of the ribbons tied to a wreath left at the church door.

Solzhenitsyn's lavish funeral revealed the change in his fortunes

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's coffin lay a short distance away. It was open, in accordance with Russian Orthodox Christian tradition.

Gilded chandeliers lit the gloom of the medieval monastery. Saints gazed down from the frescoes and icons above.

It was damp and unseasonably cold outside.

Still, from the early morning, mourners arrived to pay their respects. Some wiped away tears as they looked at the coffin.

Before them lay the body of a one-time artillery officer and prison camp inmate who defied one of the most powerful regimes of the 20th Century.

The crowds were not as large as might have been expected in this capital city of more than 10 million inhabitants - but they did include Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

His motorcade swept past beneath the battlements of the monastery's red brick walls. He had broken off a holiday especially to be there.

What a turnaround in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's fortunes.

Mr Medvedev's Communist predecessors in the Kremlin would never have come.

They reviled the dissident author for his account of Stalin's prison camp system. It was an experience which millions had shared, some too afraid even to speak of it afterwards.

But Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about it, so that millions more might know.

Bitter opposition

That is what brought the mourners to Moscow's Donskoi Monastery.

The Russian president cut short his holiday to attend the funeral

"Through his efforts, we found out the truth about our country," Irina Grigoryevna told me.

"He argued against the system, and it cost him a lot. It was my civic duty," Karolina explained when I asked her why she had decided to come.

"He was a very brave and strong man who was able to represent in himself the best characteristics of our country. When you come to such a man, not just to honour him," Anna said. "You also receive something from being near such a figure."

She held two carnations in her right hand. The even number of flowers was a sign to any Russian that she was on her way to a funeral.

A guard of honour carried the coffin from the church while a military band played at the graveside and soldiers fired shots into the air.

After his bitter opposition to the Soviet regime, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had an easier relationship with what came after.

He returned to Russia in 1994, when Boris Yeltsin was president. He expressed his approval of aspects of Vladimir Putin's administration.

Man of the century

Mr Putin awarded him one of Russia's highest state honours.

It is one of the twists of Russian history that a former KGB officer should recognize the achievements of one of the Soviet system's highest profile critics.

That is not to say Alexander Solzhenitsyn was satisfied. He criticised the chaos the country lived through under Mr Yeltsin; questioned the state of democracy under Mr Putin.

His staunch nationalist views led him to challenge anything he felt threatened or weakened Russia.

In his final years, he became less of a public figure. Perhaps because of that, there were fewer younger people at the funeral. Some here certainly feel that Alexander Solzhenitsyn's era died with him - that he was very much a man of the 20th Century.

Whatever today's assessment, he now has a place in the history of a country which once took away his citizenship.