WAR.WIRE
Solzhenitsyn accuses NATO of plotting against Russia
 MOSCOW, April 27 (AFP) Apr 27, 2006
 Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn lashed out at NATO, accusing it of plotting to subject Russia to its control, in an interview to be published Friday in the Moscow News newspaper.

NATO's actions amount "to preparations for the complete encirclement of Russia and its loss of sovereignty," the former Soviet dissident said, in excerpts quoted by the Interfax news agency.

"Though it is clear that present-day Russia poses no threat to it, NATO is methodically and persistently building up its military machine into the east of Europe and ... continually surrounding Russia from the south," Solzhenitsyn said.

The three former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as well as four other ex-Communist states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia, joined the alliance in 2004, angering Russia.

Two other former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, have stated their aim of joining NATO in the near future. Three other former Soviet satellites, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, had earlier joined the alliance.

Solzhenitsyn also accused NATO of supporting democratic revolutions in former Soviet republics, and of stepping up its influence in Central Asia, Russia's traditional backyard.

The United States, a leading NATO member, currently leases an airbase in the Central Asian former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, where Russia also has troops stationed.

The Nobel Prize winner also accused Russia of thoughtlessly trying to copy Western democracy, which he described as being "in crisis."

"We have opted for the most thoughtless form of imitation. And yes, present-day Western democracy is in a state of crisis, and it is still impossible to foresee how it will try to overcome it," Solzhenitsyn said.

Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 and revealed to the world a detailed story of the Soviet Union's system of labour camps in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," "The First Circle" and "The Gulag Archipelago," was stripped of Soviet citizenship in 1974 and expelled.

He lived in West Germany, Switzerland and the United States until his return in 1994. Since then, he has been critical of the West amd also of Russia's post-Soviet evolution, calling for a return to traditional moral values.