Russians pay last respects to Solzhenitsyn

Mostly elderly mourners filed past Solzhenitsyn’s open coffin at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow laying flowers and crossing themselves before one of Russia’s last literary legends, who died on Sunday aged 89.

Nobel prize-winner Solzhenitsyn, who spent eights years in Joseph Stalins Gulag prison camps, will then be buried in an Orthodox ceremony in the grounds of the 16th-century Donskoy Monastery in Moscow on Wednesday.

Among the hundreds of mourners was Sergei Aristarkhov, who brought a copy of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," Solzhenitsyn’s groundbreaking account of Soviet prison life, and a bouquet of white flowers.

"I came here because in the 1970s, I read this one little book that completely changed everything for me... When I heard the news yesterday, it was a terrible blow for me," said the 64-year-old, before bursting into tears.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who earlier said Solzhenitsyn’s death was "a heavy loss for the whole of Russia," was also expected to attend the lying-in-state before traveling to the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.

Alexander Shelyudkov, 34, a builder, said: "He wrote and wasn’t afraid."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev led tributes by world leaders to the writer on Monday, with a condolence telegram to his family in which he praised "one of the greatest thinkers, writers and humanists of the 20th century." French President Nicolas

Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Soviet Unions last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, were among the politicians who also honored the writer.

Russian newspapers on Tuesday mourned the passing of a literary giant.

"A Prophet Has Died In His Homeland," read a headline in the popular Komsomolskaya Pravda daily. The government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta compared Solzhenitsyn to celebrated Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

"He was not one of those people that everyone loves... But he was one of those people whose role in history cannot be exaggerated -- it is not just significant, it is enormous," said the Kommersant daily.

Solzhenitsyn shook the foundations of Soviet power with his haunting accounts of the forced labor camps. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 and was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.

He returned to Russia in 1994 in a train journey to Moscow that started in the city of Magadan, where countless thousands perished in the camps. At every stop along the way, he was greeted by large crowds of fans.

But his gloomy harangues on Russian television about the perils of imitating the West and the need to revive Orthodox values were then widely unpopular, although his views now have a bigger following in the Russia of today.

He most recently campaigned for greater local self-government in Russia, criticizing former president Putin for rolling back democratic freedoms. He also praised Putin, however, for reviving Russia’s greatness.

In 2007 he was awarded the State Prize, Russia’s highest honor, but has lived largely out of the public eye in recent years, concentrating on the publication of his 30-volume complete works.