Solzhenitsyn v. the KGB

The Soviet secret police tried for years to silence Russia's most famous living writer by framing him in criminal plots. The KGB, for example, attempted to sell to Western publishers, supposedly at Alexander Solzhenitsyn's own request, manuscripts that could have led to his imprisonment on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda.

The KGB worked in such shadowy ways that no one, least of all Solzhenitsyn, was able to establish the secret police's role in these conspiracies. Since his expulsion from the Soviet Union last February, the writer has uncovered one such KGB plot that could have led to his arrest on treason charges. In the following article written expressly for TIME--the first he has published since coming to the West--Solzhenitsyn provides a detailed example of how the secret police can threaten the lives of Soviet dissidents.

In 1972 the KGB initiated a correspondence in my name with Vassili Orekhov, the director of the Russian National Association. It is a small emigre organization based in Brussels that deals with czarist military history. The KGB devised letters in which my handwriting was forged. At first the letters contained only innocent requests for information about the first World War. Then followed a suggestion, purportedly from me, that Orekhov come to Prague or send a representative.

At first the KGB mailed these false letters from Prague, using the return address of the well-known author and psychiatrist Josef Nesvadba. Later they supposedly were sent by a certain Ottokar Gorsky, whose home address was given as 1, Revolution Street, the location of the Czechoslovak airline and tourist offices. But Gorsky's telephone number indicated that he lived in another district--which happens to be the location both of the Soviet embassy and the Czechoslovak secret police.

I do not know how widespread this provocation was or how it would have gone if I had not been expelled from the Soviet Union. Apparently the aim was to arrest some Russian emigres from the West who were visiting Prague and to construct around them a criminal case that would have demonstrated that I had links with emigre organizations. "Links with the outside" is a beloved theme song of Soviet propaganda.

Precisely because this case is founded upon an imitation of handwriting and could be repeated in the future, I decided to publish the following documents. The first is a comparison of my genuine handwriting with a sample from a forged letter. The handwriting is not an exact copy, but the similarities can be deceiving. It is obvious that the KGB had at its disposal many more samples of my handwriting and signature in the letters that passed through the censor, among them my return address, which they accurately reproduced. They were equally skilled at forging my signature.

It can be expected that these machinations will be used again by Soviet propaganda in the present campaign to falsify my past and to discredit me. After my expulsion, I was officially declared to be a nonperson. Nonetheless, the KGB in no way has reduced its activity against me and my friends.

Since the KGB people were incapable of destroying me, they organized on the day of my expulsion a witches' Sabbath at which they conducted a ritual burning of the clothes I had worn at the time of my arrest. Then the KGB dressed me in used clothes. The next day, a confidential order went out for all libraries to burn the few remaining editions of my works and to destroy completely all copies of Novy Mir [the literary magazine] that contained my stories.

Beginning on the day of my expulsion, searches started at homes of my friends. In Ryazan, 14 KGBisti [secret policemen] showed up at the home of Natalya Radugina. There also were searches in other cities where the secret police hoped to find my samizdat [underground press] articles or anything else written by my hand. In Moscow, at the home of Neonell Snesareva, instead of an open search the police staged a fake robbery, a favorite masquerade of the KGBisti. They confiscated everything concerning me and left behind in the typewriter a sneering note: "We love Solzhenitsyn so much that we took along his work."

They have started putting systematic pressure on all people suspected of being my friends or even only acquaintances. The latest case: the persecution of Professor Efim Etkin in Leningrad, who last month was kicked out of the Writers' Union and stripped of his academic title and positions.

Even here in Zurich, the KGB has continued its provocations. Soviet citizens who make no secret of their origins telephone or come uninvited to my home. They warn me to be careful of my children. I first received such threats a year ago in Moscow in letters written to me by mythical Soviet gangsters. But after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, the warnings began to come from Soviet "patriots."

Now these threats are repeated by my Zurich callers as "sympathetic warnings" against Western gangsters. But my experience has proved to me that all the gangsters in my life come from one and the same organization.

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