TRIBUTES have poured in from around the world today for Nobel prize-winning Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died aged 89 after a life devoted to exposing the brutal Soviet Gulag prison system.
Recognisable in later life by his flowing beard and ascetic clothing, he had been frail for several years and died of heart failure late yesterday, his son Stepan said.
"He had been ill many years, but nevertheless he was still able to work every day and he was of completely sound mind all this time, so his death, in fact, was sudden,`` Stepan said.
The author was working on corrections to a 30-volume set of collected works the day of his death, Stepan said, adding that the family would "treasure`` the many condolences they were receiving.
Solzhenitsyn`s lying in state will take place at the Russian Academy of Sciences tomorrow ahead of his burial at the Donskoye cemetery in Moscow the day after, an official from the writer`s foundation said.
President Dmitry Medvedev hailed him as "one of the greatest thinkers, writers and humanists of the 20th century`` and "an irreplaceable loss``.
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 after depicting in harrowing detail the Soviet labour camps, where he spent eight years from 1945.
He toiled obsessively to unearth the darkest secrets of Stalinist rule and his work ultimately dealt a crippling blow to the Soviet Union`s authority.
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