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Pastimes : A CENTURY OF LIONS/THE 20TH CENTURY TOP 100 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (2885)	5/17/2000 1:41:00 AM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

newsday.com Russian Author Shuns New President by ANDREW KRAMER Associated Press Writer MOSCOW (AP) -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the dissident author who protested Soviet injustice and then turned his pen against corruption under former President Boris Yeltsin, said Tuesday that Russia's new leader was continuing in the misguided path of his predecessors. The comments were among Solzhenitsyn's first on President Vladimir Putin's performance. Solzhenitsyn -- whom many see as the country's voice of conscience -- reprimanded Putin for waiting so long to release his economic plans while so many Russians were facing severe hardship. He also criticized what he called Putin's record of inaction as Russia's second democratically elected leader. ''Russia needs to be saved not in a matter of years, but in weeks and months,'' Solzhenitsyn said, addressing a small audience of intellectuals and students in Moscow's central Lenin Library. The 81-year-old Nobel laureate -- who has led a mostly reclusive life since his 1994 return from exile -- spoke in the elegant and reasoned style that belies the decade he spent in hard labor camps under the Soviets. ''The new president has been in office for not just 40 days,'' but for more than half a year including his work as prime minister. ''In this time I have seen nothing,'' he said. Named prime minister in August, Putin assumed the presidency on Dec. 31 after Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, and then won an election on March 26. Solzhenitsyn criticized Putin's reluctance to distance himself from corruption in government. The writer specifically lashed out at Putin for granting Yeltsin a blanket decree of immunity from prosecution, and for Putin's seeming reluctance to fire self-serving officials. ''Hundreds should be brought before the courts'' for pilfering national property, Solzhenitsyn said. He said Putin, who has not yet released an official economic program but appears ready to support more privatization and a liberal market approach, was uncritically following Yeltsin's policies. Solzhenitsyn said these policies enriched a tight coterie of Kremlin insiders while bringing poverty to the majority of Russians. ''We literally exist among ruins, but pretend to have a normal life,'' the writer was quoted as saying last week in a Moscow newspaper. Solzhenitsyn spoke out against a proposed law on privatizing agricultural land, which he said would not help farmers realize a centuries-old dream of owning the land they tilled, but would allow a few business moguls to divide up the country He also lashed out at powerful regional governors, saying they were eroding the country's unity. Russia instead should focus on city and local government to build a true democracy, he said. ''We can only build something strong and healthy from the bottom up, as all things grow in nature,'' he said. Solzhenitsyn's books, including ''A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' and ''The Gulag Archipelago,'' became classic studies of totalitarianism and the prison camp experience, and exposed the cruelty cloaked in the Soviet communist ideals. But after an emotional return from decades in exile, mostly spent in Vermont, the writer has alienated many Russians with his conservative and nationalist views, and his shrill criticism of capitalism and the West is sometimes ignored. Still, he is among the few Russians who remain voices of moral authority to their country. Solzhenitsyn also decried the poor state of Russia's library system, and the lack of new books for the young generation.