Behind every great man ...

Thank you for the obituary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ("The Week," September 1). I'm grateful that you remember his work and write appreciatively of his life.

However, I'd like to point out that you extend sympathy only to his sons. Not only is his widow, Natalya, alive, but she was a vital partner in his life and work. Their sons were children, two of them still less than two years old, when the KGB invaded their home in 1974 and took Solzhenitsyn away by force.

Solzhenitsyn writes about his wife in the final paragraphs of The Oak and the Calf:

   She now had to ... transfer to
   Switzerland by land, sea, or air my
   whole enormous archive, including
   twelve years of preparatory materials
   ... without losing a single piece of
   paper, not even an ordinary file folder,
   and put it all in the same drawers of the
   same desk when it arrived. On the way,
   she must not fail to carry every single
   page of importance ... through the steel
   ring of controls at the frontier, must give
   them no chance to use the dozen photocopying
   machines kept ready in the customs
   sheds, must above all not let them
   take anything away from her, because it
   is impossible, physically impossible, for
   the Soviet regime to release so much as
   a single sheet of paper that is not to its
   liking.

My wife succeeded in this task. Otherwise, here in exile I would have been a helpless cripple, lamenting my plight, not a writer. How she did it is yet another story.

Only their sons could tell you of Natalya Solzhenitsyn's continuing help during the years of exile and the years after their return to Russia. Perhaps someday they will. For the present, please extend your sympathy to her also.

Lee Browne

Ellensburg, Wash.