Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author who exposed the horrors of Soviet-era labor camps, was buried today at the Donskoi Monastery in Moscow in a state funeral attended by President Dmitry Medvedev.

Solzhenitsyn's widow Natalia and their sons stood by the grave under a chilly, overcast sky. White-gloved soldiers fired a salute. The ceremony, attended by hundreds of mourners, was broadcast live on state television.

The author had appealed to Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II five years ago to be laid to rest in the monastery's cemetery, state television station Vesti-24 said. Solzhenitsyn's grave is next to that of pre-revolutionary historian Vasily Klyuchevsky.

Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure three days ago at the age of 89 after months of ill health. The author, who portrayed dictator Josef Stalin's labor camps and political oppression, was stripped of his Soviet citizenship in 1974, four years after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature at a ceremony he couldn't attend. He lived in Switzerland before moving to the U.S.

Medvedev, who interrupted a working vacation on the Volga River to attend, ordered the government to create scholarships in the author's name and for Moscow to name a street in his honor. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for Solzhenitsyn's works to be studied more extensively in schools as ``a vaccination against tyranny for our society,'' Vesti-24 reported.

Political Prisoner

After returning from exile in 1994, Solzhenitsyn became a critic of Russia's first post-communist leader, Boris Yeltsin. He later praised Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, for restoring Russia's authority in the world.

Solzhenitsyn, who wrote more than 20 books, drew on his own experience as a political prisoner in his early works, including ``One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' and ``The First Circle.'' In 2007, Solzhenitsyn accepted a state award from Putin for outstanding achievement in culture and education.

Medvedev laid red roses on Solzhenitsyn's open casket during the funeral service at the monastery today, as Putin did yesterday during a memorial ceremony at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Putin yesterday praised Solzhenitsyn for giving ``an example of truly selfless devotion and of unselfish service to the people, the fatherland'' and for championing ``the ideals of freedom, justice and humanism.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Torrey Clark in Moscow at tclark8@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 6, 2008 10:02 EDT