“For a free Russia…” Between past and present, on Thursday, January 30, the son of Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) paid tribute not only to his father but also to all those who made it possible for The Gulag Archipelago to be published in Paris in December 1973. “It is well known to thoughtful people – or rather to people whose spiritual flair is not dead –that one of the most important rights of the peoples of the earth is the right to memory,” said Ignat Solzhenitsyn, 52.
On the cobblestones of 11 Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, home of the legendary Franco-Russian bookshop Les Editeurs Réunis in the 5th arrondissement, he was the guest of honor at the ceremony to unveil the plaque honoring “the Russian writer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, a great figure of resistance to totalitarianism.”
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, now a conductor based in the US, and the other speakers at the ceremony recalled the role of the various key players who led to the publication in the West of The Gulag Archipelago, the book the Kremlin wanted to ban. From the anonymous and discreet French diplomat stationed in Moscow who had managed to exfiltrate the banned work out of Russia, to Nikita Struve, director at the time of YMCA-Press, the publishing house also known as Les Editeurs Réunis bookshop.
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