The article is written on the occasion of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s 100th anniversary. It presents the writer’s view on France of the 1970s, on the French, their mass media, French history. It is noted that Solzhenitsyn’s special attitude to France had been determined by reasons of his worldview.
The article analyses the image of Switzerland on the material of the ‘sketches of exile’ Between Two Millstones, episodes of The Red Wheel and A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s opinion journalism. A. I. Solzhenitsyn went to Switzerland to collect the material for the chapters about Lenin. The author of the article shows Switzerland as a key point in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s worldview geography, alongside France and Japan.
The article analyzes the image of Norway in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s memoir sketches The Oak and the Calf and Between Two Millstones and his letters. The writer intended to settle there in case he was exiled from Russia, because he felt the affinity of living in Norway with that in Russia, he called Norway his ‘second motherland’. The author of the article considers Norway as a significant place in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s worldview geography.
