The death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is being rightly seen as a major event, even by the BBC, which has conspicuously neglected the crimes of Communism. Its a long time since I read most of his novels- The First Circle and Lenin in Zurich perhaps being the best of them- but the opening of the Gulag Archipelago is fixed in my mind. Some hungry zeks are acting as labourers on an archaeological dig. They come across some frozen prehistoric fish. To the incredulity of the archaeologists, they light a fire and greedily devour what they have found. As usual his death has become an occasion for vacuous competitive speculation about whether or not he was as great a writer as Pushkin or Tolstoy. He was something else entirely, a remarkably brave man who by exposing a hellish criminal system, struck a major blow for freedom. I hope Russia gives him the state funeral he so richly deserves, even if the presiding dignatories are themselves former KGB.