NYT:
But Mr. Rostropovich became famous well beyond musical circles, as a symbol of artistic conscience and his defiance of the Soviet regime. When the writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn came increasingly under attack by Soviet authorities in the late 1960’s, Mr. Rostropovich and Miss Vishnevskaya allowed him to stay in their dacha at Zhukovka, outside Moscow. He was their guest for four years, and Mr. Rostropovich tried to intercede on his behalf, personally taking the manuscript of “August 1914” to the Ministry of Culture and arguing that there was nothing threatening to the Soviet system in it. His efforts were rebuffed.