Putin awards Solzhenitsyn for outstanding humanitarian achievements

Moscow, Jun 5 (UNI) President Vladimir Putin today signed a decree to award the 2006 State Prize to famous Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for his outstanding achievements in the cultural and educational spheres, the Kremlin press service said.

'' Alexander Solzhenitsyn is famous in Russia and across the world both as a writer and a major historian. His works on critical phases of Russian history have influenced the development of world historiography. He was a pioneer in the fields of historical anthropology and cultural studies,'' the decree said.

Solzhenitsyn, 88, whose work exposed the horrors of Stalinist labour camps, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, but was imprisoned and expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 following the publication of his seminal work '' The Gulag Archipelago''.

He returned to Russia in 1994 after 20 years in exile in Europe and the United States.

'' Solzhenitsyn's main work, Gulag Archipelago, was the first record of a tragic event in the Soviet Union,'' the press service noted adding the '' The author presented this phenomenon as an aspect of the totalitarian systems of the 20th century.'' '' Writing this work was the first step towards gathering the recollections and testimonies of former prisoners within a single record, and therefore conducting a specific type of historic research,'' it said.

Solzhenitsyn, at present not in good health, has been living near Moscow. He, through his rare interviews or opinions, conveyed by his wife Natalia, highlights the falling moral standards and a dramatic population decline in Russia, due to low living standards, increasing alcoholism and drug addiction.

UNI