Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russia's most celebrated living writer, yesterday launched a memorably waspish attack on George Bush, accusing him of falling for a "loony fable" over Ukrainian history

the 89-year old Nobel laureate suggested that the US president had accepted Ukrainian claims the country had been the victim of a "Holocaust" under Stalin in the 1930s

Solzhenitsyn said the famine had "mown down" not only Ukrainians but millions of ordinary citizens across the Soviet Union. Many of the communists who orchestrated it were in fact Ukrainian

"This provocative outcry about genocide ... has been elevated to the top government level in contemporary Ukraine. Does this mean that they have even outdone the Bolshevik propaganda mongers with their rakish juggling?"

"western people"

little exposure to "monstrous lies", and were therefore more willing to believe historical errors

"They have never really got into our history. All they need is a loony fable,"