Nobel award to disgraced writer certain to give grave offence to Soviet establishment Mr. Solzhenitsyn: expeUled from W7riters' Union. Moscow, Uct. t Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the dis- graced Soviet novelist, is reported to have said that he will accepl the Nobel prize for literature which was awarded to him today and that he will- try to go tc Stockholm to receive it. " I am grateful ", he was quoted as saying when informed of the news. He said he was in good enough health to travel and would do so if he was allowed to. The award is certain to give grave offence to the Soviet Com- munist Party and literary establ- ishment. It will awaken bitter memories of the Pasternak affair, with which Mr. Solzbenitsyn's case has some parallels, Boris Pasternak, author of Dr. Zhivago, was awarded the prize in 1958, but decided under pressure not to aocept it. The Soviet authorities will con- sider that Mr. Solzhenitsyn has been honoured for political rea- sons alone, and nothing will shake their conviction that this is so. A denunciation of the decision can be expected in the literary press. But first the whole affair will have to be thoroughly mulled over by the heads of the Writers' Union, who expelled Mr. Solzhen- itsyn last yeac and are be- lieved to have dreaded the pros- pect of this award. They may try to persuade bim to refuse it. The next issue of the Literary Gazette does not come out for nearly a week, but this would seem to be the most likely organ for publication of the official reaction. It is possible that noth- ing will be said until then. Mr. Solzhenitsyn's present whereabouts is not generally known. He was last rumoured to be enjoying the hospitality of Mr. Mstislav Rostropovich. the cellist, near Moscow. Mr. Solzhenitsyn, who is 51, began life as a schoolteacher; but was soon serving as an artillery officer in the Second World War. le was decorated, but in 1945 was arrested for criticising Stalin in letters home. The secret police sentenced him without trial to eight years in a labour camp. He was forced to conduct scientific research and, later, to work in a mine. He began writing -and at about the same time contracted cancer. The first draft of his short novel one Day in the Life of Ivan Den isov- ich dates from this period. Released into exile in 1953 and cured of his cancer, he finished his novel The First Circle, which has never been published in Russia but is by now well known to readers in the west. It describes life in a special camp for scien- tific.research workers. After Mr. Khrushchev's denun- ciation of Stalin in 1956 Mr. Solzhenitsyn was among those re- habilitated. He returned to teach- ing in Ryazan. continuing to write in his spare time. A play, a film script and a story date from this period, when he was still un- known to the public. In 1962 Ivan Denisovich was published in the literary journal Novy Mir (whose editor,. Mr. Alexander Tvardovsky, lost his post soon after Mr. Solzhenitsyn's expulsion from tie Writers' Union). The novel drew praise from Mr; Khrushchev himself. which temporarily silenced angry criticism from conservative quar- ters in the Communist Party: flowevev, stories published it. Novy. Mir the following year drew fresh critiGism, and soon a fiull-scale political and literary controversy- was raging round Mr. Soliheitsyn's name. The secret police confiscated some of his manuscripts from an acquaio- tapce. In 1967 Mr. Solzhenitsyn was barred from the Soviet Writers Congress and retaliated with a letter denouncing the. state of affairs in Soviet literature. He was defended by Mr. Tvardovsky and attacked by Mr. Konstantin Fcdin, chairman of the Writers Union. Novy Mir was forced to abandon plans to print Mr. Sol- zhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. In 1968 a number of Mr. Sol- zhenitsyn's unpublished works were brought out in the west. He has denied any responsibility for this and has suggested that they were deliberately sent abroad in order to discredit him. Last year it was rumoured that he might.receive the Nobel prize, and this is believed to have been one factor in the campaign that resulted in his expulsion from the union last November. He pro- tested in a brilliantly written open letter, warning the uniop of the unhealthy state of affairs in the Soviet literary and political set- up. The union replied that he could go and live abroad if he wished, but Mr. Solzhenitsyn has said before that he will never do this. If he wishes to remain a Soviet citizen, it seems unlikely that he will be allowed to leave the country to receive the Nobel prize. He is reported to be working on a new novel about the First World War. Ironically, another Soviet laureate of the Nobel prize for literature is Mr. Mikhail Sho- lokhov. the veteran novelist. He is violently opposed to people of Mr. Solzhenitsyn's views and last year publicly attacked them as Colorado beetles ". Leading article, page 13. From David Bonavia Nobel award to disgraced writer certain to give grave offence to Soviet establishment Solzhenitsyn ready to accept prize