SOVIET UNION: Solzhenitsyn Speaks Out

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They decided to suffocate me. The plan is to either drive me out of society or out of the country, throw me in a ditch or drive me to Siberia, or have me dissolve in an "alien fog."

Despite the intensity of a campaign of vilification by Soviet authorities, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russia's Nobel-prizewinning novelist, for years refused to discuss with foreigners the charges against him. His best-known works (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, The First Circle) deal mainly with the victims of Stalinist terror. Last week, in a dramatic departure from his earlier reticence, Solzhenitsyn talked with two Western newsmen about his own precarious existence under an increasingly hostile regime. Said he: "A kind of forbidden contaminated zone has been created around my family."

As the writer spoke to the Washington Post's Robert G. Kaiser and the New York Times's Hedrick Smith in the Moscow apartment of his attractive second wife, Natalya, 32, he frequently consulted with her about whether to answer certain questions. She, in turn, often glanced at the ceiling, to indicate that electronic listening devices were undoubtedly recording the conversation. During the interview, the couple's 15-month-old son Yermolai played happily on the floor.

Ominous Charge. Over berry juice and a homemade fruitcake, Solzhenitsyn complained that, among other things, he was continually being spied upon, that his visitors were harassed and intimidated, and that his wife had been fired from her post as a mathematician at the Institute of the International Workers Movement. He also declared that his efforts to collect research for a new book called October 1916 were handicapped by officials. "You Westerners cannot imagine my situation," he said. "I live in my own country; I write a novel about Russia. But it is as hard for me to gather material as if I were writing about Polynesia."

Solzhenitsyn's decision to hold his first major interview ever with Western correspondents was undoubtedly caused by his fear of a Soviet propaganda campaign against him, which has grown stronger in recent months. The most ominous charge made is that he collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. According to Solzhenitsyn, this slander has been repeated by agitprop lecturers at closed meetings in schools, government offices, factories and military units throughout Russia. "Behind closed doors you can make a gullible people believe any lie," said Solzhenitsyn, a former artillery captain who was decorated three times for bravery. "They say, 'Solzhenitsyn gave himself up to the Germans—no, he surrendered a whole battery. Even better, he worked right in the Gestapo.' "