Moscow, Sept. 20: Russian President Medvedev’s noble gesture to honour Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s struggle against totalitarian rule in the former Soviet Union, by naming a street in Moscow after him, has reopened a debate about Russia’s remaining symbols of the communist era.

According to The Times, the decision sparked protests from the small Communist faction on the city council, which complained that it was disrespectful to the revolutionaries who had fought to establish the Soviet regime that Solzhenitsyn helped to destroy.

London, Aug 9 : Late Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn''s malevolent side has been exposed in a letter criticizing Russian historian Zhores Medvedev.

In the letter he sent to The Times, the year of his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, Solzhenitsyn panned the 83-year-old historian branding him an apologist for the regime and making public statements that served the Soviet empire better than the “whole Soviet propaganda apparatus”.

However, Medvedev dismissed the accusations, insisting that the claims were “absolute rubbish”