MOSCOW (AP) - Renowned Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who issued rare words of praise for Vladimir Putin after he rose to the presidency, slammed the current state of the country Friday and said Putin had failed to live up to expectations.
Solzhenitsyn, an 83-year-old Nobel literature laureate, was persecuted for chronicling the brutality of the Communist regime and spent two decades in exile in Vermont. He surprised many Russians with his praise two years ago for Putin, a former KGB agent who spied for the Soviet state.
Since his return to Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn has earned a reputation as an eloquent, curmudgeonly nationalist. In a rare interview on state-run RTR television shown Friday night, the writer slammed the ``grandiose plundering of Russia in the 1990s.''
``Our best factories, our priceless natural resources were transferred - practically free of charge - into the hands of a group of adventurers,'' he said.
Solzhenitsyn largely blamed ex-President Boris Yeltsin for allowing rigged privatizations of state enterprises. But he blamed Putin for not turning things around.
``When our new president came (to power) there were hopes that he would crack down on those impostors, that he would make them pay in full for what they had seized, but this has not happened,'' he said.
He said the privatization deals have left the government so broke that military helicopters are crashing with increasing frequency for lack of maintenance, and forest fires rage unchecked because firefighters don't have the proper equipment.
Solzhenitsyn's chronicle of life in Stalinist-era labor camps made him a strong voice in defense of human rights, and his ``Gulag Archipelago'' trilogy remains the most detailed published history of how Soviet dictator Josef Stalin terrorized, murdered and imprisoned millions.