No Glasnost for Solzhenitsyn’s Works, Soviet Ideology Chief Says

MOSCOW —  The Soviet Union’s new ideology chief said Tuesday that he opposes the publication of the “Gulag Archipelago” and other works by exiled author Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn because they would undermine Soviet society.

“I am against the publication of a number of works by Solzhenitsyn, and in the first place such works as ‘Lenin in Zurich’ and the ‘Gulag Archipelago,’ ” said Politburo member Vadim A. Medvedev.

“To publish Solzhenitsyn’s works would mean to, in effect, undermine the foundations on which today’s life rests,” Medvedev said in response to a reporter’s question at a news conference.

Under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost , or openness, many previously prohibited works have been published.

Medvedev is considered a theoretician on many social and economic reform policies, but his statement Tuesday indicated there still are limits on the amount of openness allowed under Gorbachev’s reforms.

There has been a clamor among some writers, artists and activists in informal political groups that Solzhenitsyn’s works be included and that he be allowed to visit the Soviet Union.

In October, the film-makers’ union asked for a review of his 1974 expulsion from the Soviet Union. The Nobel Prize-winning author now lives in Cavendish, Vt.

His novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in 1962 during the thaw allowed by Nikita S. Khrushchev after the death of Stalin. But the remainder of his major works remain unpublished in his native land.