Solzhenitsyn Effigy Hanged In Front Of Gulag Museum In Moscow

Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died in Moscow in 2008 at the age of 89.

An effigy of Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has been hung up in front of Moscow's gulag museum.

A group calling itself the Revolutionary Communist Union Of Youth took responsibility for the October 9 action.

The effigy was found with a noose around its neck before it was removed by museum staff.

A letter fastened to the Solzhenitsyn dummy said:

Here, the traitor Solzhenitsyn has been hanged,
The one, who liked to mock the sacred truth,
Who shamelessly lied about the gulag,
He is a terrible enemy of the Motherland!
The gulag museum goes ahead with lies
And former dissidents are being glorified
Now here they are embracing as two pals:
The traitorous man and the treacherous museum!

Solzhenitsyn -- whose most famous works include One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago -- spent many years in the Soviet gulag prison system for his anticommunist activities.

He was expelled to the West in 1974, where he spent 20 years before returning to Russia.

Solzhenitsyn died in Moscow in 2008 at the age of 89.