Plays and Screenplays > The Freeloader

The Freeloader

The Freeloader was written on commission from Mosfilm studios, although it soon became clear that it would not be set to screen. It is based on the author’s own automobile accident and its “illicit” repair in Ryazan. The mechanic Pasha is a real-life character. Episodes of Election Day are taken from descriptions by “agitators” with whom the author was personally acquainted. The character Inogorodnyi is the real-life Georgiy Tenno, an actual episode not long before his death in 1967. No sooner was the screenplay submitted to Mosfilm in November 1968 than it was stopped “from above”. The Freeloader has never been set to screen.  It is being published here for the first time.

—Editor’s note to the Russian edition of The Freeloader: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, Vermont and Paris: YMCA Press, 1981, p. 593.

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The Freeloader
This screenplay is currently being translated into English.
⟐ Download (Russian PDF)
Solzhenitsyn.ru