Here is a very interesting Guardian article about Solzhenitsyn. He is in failing health, but he works everyday on his 30 volumes of his selected works. It also discusses his Russian nationalism and his dislike of western secularism.
A sample:
Some point out that Solzhenitsyn’s views have not changed greatly,
and his preoccupation with Russian culture, history and language are
central to his novels, which are themselves proof of his genius and his
status as one of the 20th century’s moral giants. Yesterday Natalia
Solzhenitsyn said her husband, who uses a wheelchair, remained
stubbornly politically independent. She said neither of them voted in
last month’s heavily managed presidential election, which saw Putin’s
handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, win by a landslide. ‘We live
outside town,’ she explained.Yesterday DM Thomas, Solzhenitsyn’s
biographer, said it would be simplistic to describe the novelist as
either nationalistic or reactionary. ‘Patriotic and religiously
conservative might suit,’ he told The Observer. ‘He disliked the
secularism of the West almost as much as he disliked communism. He is
in no way nationalistic in the sense of elevating Russia above others,
or wishing for territorial aggrandisement… Above all, I think, he is
or was a strong Orthodox believer. He hated the Bolshevik revolution,
and because Jews played such an important role in that, he has laid
himself open to the charge of being anti-semitic. I argued in my
biography that this was based on a misunderstanding of his views.’
