Nobelist Backs Chechen Independence

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn wants Moscow to grant Chechnya independence, but only after the Kremlin strips the rebel region of its northern “Russian” parts, the Itar-Tass news agency said Wednesday.

Solzhenitsyn, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature who returned to Russia last year after more then 20 years in exile, told Itar-Tass that further military action in Chechnya could trigger large-scale war in the North Caucasus region. “Chechnya should be recognized (as an independent state) within its genuine ethnic borders,” he said. “Let it be independent if it wants.”

According to Solzhenitsyn, the most fertile lands in northern Chechnya belong by tradition to Russian Cossacks, who settled there during a czarist push into the Caucasus region from the 18th Century onward. Echoing widely held conservative opinion, Solzhenitsyn said this land should remain Russian.