Nobel Winner Chronicled Tyranny of Soviet Union

In summer 1973, two events heightened the years of tension between Solzhenitsyn and the regime: Solzhenitsyn denounced detente between Moscow and Washington and the secret police arrested one of his volunteer typists, Elisovna Denisovna Voronyanskaya, and obtained a copy of "The Gulag Archipelago."

A few days later, she was found hanged in her small communal apartment, an apparent suicide. With the need for protecting sources gone, Solzhenitsyn authorized publication of a Russian-language edition of "The Gulag" in Paris.

Through his writing, Solzhenitsyn had made himself intolerable to the Soviets.

In a 1973 essay he said of Soviet principles and acts: "It is precisely because our state, through sheer force of habit, tradition and inertia, continues to cling to this false doctrine, with all its tortuous aberrations, that it needs to put the dissenter behind bars."

On Jan. 7, 1974, the Politburo decided to exile him. He was arrested Feb. 12 and flown to Germany the next day.

Mstislav Rostropovich, the late cellist and former music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, had supported and sheltered Solzhenitsyn before Rostropovich himself went into exile.

In 1974, Solzhenitsyn established the Russian Social Fund to Aid Political Prisoners and Their Families and gave it all the royalties from "The Gulag Archipelago," by far his most profitable work.

Although he normally worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, Solzhenitsyn had a warm and loving family life with Natalia Svetlova, his second wife, and their sons, Yermolai, Ignat and Stepan, all of whom survive him.

In contrast to his relations with his second family, Solzhenitsyn's treatment of his first wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya, revealed streaks of cruelty and pettiness. Once in the 1960s, he told her an affair he was having was necessary to his art. She objected, and he ended the relationship but not his womanizing.

Solzhenitsyn's views and abrasive style stirred controversies that plagued him in later years.

At a time when efforts were underway to achieve detente with the Soviets, his presence in this country was viewed as something of an embarrassment, and at one point, President Gerald R. Ford declined to invite him to the White House.

Undeterred, Solzhenitsyn did not soften his tone or change his views.