A helpful reader has alerted La Russophobe to the the following report from the April 29th News Telegraph:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accused the United States of launching a military campaign to encircle Russia and turn it into a Nato chattel. The Nobel laureate also delivered his strongest endorsement yet of President Vladimir Putin, surprising Kremlin critics who argue that the country is growing more authoritarian.

Replying in writing to questions from the weekly Moscow News, the 87-year-old former Soviet dissident said military action by the United States in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan underlined the menace to Russian sovereignty.

"Though it is clear that present-day Russia poses no threat to it whatsoever, Nato is methodically and persistently expanding its military apparatus in the east of Europe and is implementing an encirclement of Russia from the South," he wrote.

He also attacked western support for recent revolutions that toppled Moscow-backed regimes in Ukraine and Georgia.

"All this leaves no doubt that they are preparing a complete encirclement of Russia which will be followed by the deprivation of her sovereignty," he said.

Russia, he suggested, was all that stood between Nato and the "downfall of Christian civilisation".

He praised the efforts of Mr Putin "to salvage the state from failure". Arrested in 1945, Solzhenitsyn was a prisoner in both an elite laboratory for captive scientists and a labour camp in Central Asia.

After his release his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was the first work to draw attention to the camps in the Soviet Union. His longer The Gulag Archipelago provoked a furore abroad, prompting his deportation to the West in 1974. Solzhenitsyn returned to post-Soviet Russia in 1994.

The reader can see that these statements by Solzhenitsin dovetail nicely with the article from Pravda cited by La Russophobe in an earlier post. Clearly, the Kremlin is in the early throes of an Anti-West propaganda campaign, similar to that Russia has seen over and over as its miscreant governors attempt to deflect attention from their own errors and make the population more paranoid and hence more docile and easy to govern.

Yes, of course, America represents the end of "Christian civilization" as we know it, despite having the world's oldest Constitution and having changed power between rival parties dozens of times without bloodshed while Russia has never done this once in its whole existence.

Yes, of course America has nothing better to do than encircle Russia. After all, there is so very much that is desireable in Russia, what with its $300 per person per month wage scheme, it's frozen wastelands, its nuclear contamination, its disappearing population, its samagon -- why, all the world is practically salivating about getting its hooks into Russia, has been for centuries. Iran? North Korea? Iraq? Mere afterthoughts, my child. Russia is the real goal! But the Americans are so wiley! Only a genius like Solzhenitsin could spot the ploy!

But what about Solzhenitsin, you say? Why so bitter, Alexander? Why, you're practically as bitter and Ameriphobic as Chris Floyd. How now brown cow? And why suddenly so Godly? Could it be because you haven't published a significant new work in decades (that work where you said all the unpleasant things about the Jews notwithstanding)? Could it be because your bid to become Russia's next Phil Donohue, launching (of all things!) a TV talk show, met with ignominious failure? Could it be senility? Or are you really that desperate to get yourself back into the limelight that you have turned yellow?

In any case, perhaps we now need to speak of a "holy neo-Soviet Union" as the axis between Putin and Alexei II, Pope of All The Russias, grows ever tighter and Russia prepares itself for a neo-Inquisition which only the pure of heart will survive.

But on the other hand, God hasn't exactly been Russia's guardian angel so far, now has he? So perhaps Super Solzhenitsin is barking up the wrong minaret.

One thing is clear: we definitely need to be speaking about "old Solzhenitsin" and "new Solzhenitsin." Or perhaps "writer Alex" and "talk show Alex" would be better shorthand. La Russophobe in particular needs to bear this in mind. We are duly chastened.