Word: burg
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...BEST REMAINING SOURCE Burg and Feifer possessed was the dissident intelligentsia composed of Solzhenitsyn's companions and allies. For whatever their reasons, these people were willing to talk, and they knew Solzhenitsyn's struggles with the government best. Hence, the bulk of the book concentrates on Solzhenitsyn since the early '60's. The authors focus on how he reaches the public: through bureaucratic labyrinths, through the even more nebulous and confused channels of samizdat (reproduction of manuscripts on typewriters and mimeograph machines), and through publication abroad. They also recount his personal harassment by authorities, his brief spell in political favor...
...mental hospitals. Nor has he been punished with the severity of another order which put writers such as Sinyavsky and Daniel in prison. But the government has prohibited his being published within the Soviet Union and has subjected Solzhenitsyn to intense personal intimidation. In Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, David Burg and George Feifer concern themselves primarily with the difficulties between Solzhenitsyn and his government...
...Burg and Feifer's inability to convey a compelling personal description of their subject is the book's most telling failure. A biography has little purpose if the subject remains an obscure and murky personality, although in light of the authors' problems in gathering evidence their troubles are not surprising. This book is unique in its completely inadequate documentation...
...refusal of both Solzhenitsyn and the Soviet bureaucracy to help Burg and Feifer closed the major sources of information about their man. The Soviet government must possess an encyclopedic knowledge of a writer it has kept under intermittent KGB surveillance since he was a Red Army Officer in the Second World War. Solzhenitsyn, a scrupulously honest writer who would obviously be the most knowledgeable source, refused, according to Feifer and Burg, to have anything to do with a biography. His position, they claimed, is that an author of autobiographical fiction (The Cancer Ward and The First Circle) need not expose...
...this detailed account of his difficulties with the government. Burg and Feifer have added a summary of Solzhenitsyn's personal background. They discuss his childhood, school days, training as a mathematician and experiences as an artillery officer. They detail at considerable length his experiences with prison camps and with cancer...