Boundary Issues.(The Talk of the Town)

On a bright September day in 1993, not long before he ended his two decades in exile, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered a rare public address in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. Although Solzhenitsyn was energetic at the lectern, he was all but finished with his epic work as the chronicler of Soviet cruelty. With "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," "Cancer Ward," "The First Circle," and, above all, "The Gulag Archipelago," Solzhenitsyn had not only exposed the secrets of Soviet oppression and ruin; he had also presaged the collapse of Communist ideology and

Moscow's empire.

But, in Vaduz, Solzhenitsyn, a principled conservative, could not join in ...