WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th December, 2018) The great Russian writer and civil leader Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose 100-year anniversary is celebrated on Tuesday, was always confident that he would return to Russia from the exile, Russian Orthodox priest from Washington, DC, Fr. Victor Potapov told Sputnik.
Potapov met Solzhenitsyn several times at his home in the US city of Cavendish, Vermont, while working for the Russian Service of the Voice of America.
"In 1979, Alexander Isaevich told me that he will return to Russia in the 1990s," the priest said. "I was shocked to hear this because he was exiled from the country just five years ago."
However, the cleric noted, the writer sincerely believed in that, and Potapov also believed him.
Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. After a short period in West Germany and Switzerland, he eventually received an invitation from Stanford University to continue his work in the United States. The Nobel laureate spent about 18 years in Vermont until his return to Russia.
"Maybe Solzhenitsyn had some calculations, maybe he had a gift from God of some form of prophesy that he was able to envision his return," Potapov said. "Certainly, it came true, no doubt about that."
The priest has recalled that Solzhenitsyn never wanted to leave Russia and always dreamed of return.
"The man was totally devoted to his country, devoted to its liberation," he said. "He had a burning desire to live in Russia and continue his work there. He never ever reconciled with fact that he was exiled forever. His dream was always to come back."
Solzhenitsyn became famous after publishing his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. Later he wrote The First Circle and Cancer Ward. The writer won international acclaim after the publication of his monumental work Gulag Archipelago, which he wrote in 1958-1968.
Solzhenitsyn was granted the Nobel prize for literature in 1970. He died in 2009 at the age of 89 in Moscow, Russia.
