The funeral service of Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn will take place today at the mediaeval Donskoi monastery, where Mr Solzhenitsyn will be buried. Russia paid tribute to Mr Solzhenitsyn yesterday with all the hallmarks of an offical lying-in-state.

While Muscovites lined up to honour the Nobel Laureate, four Russian soldiers in dress uniform stood at attention at the open coffin in the Russian Academy of Sciences - a telling symbol of recognition for the former exile.

A large portrait of Mr Solzhenitsyn and a Russian flag completed the backdrop.

After tributes from world leaders following Mr Solzhenitsyn's death from heart failure at 89 on Sunday, Russians paid respects to the survivor of Stalin's Gulag prison camps who documented their tyranny and challenged Soviet rule at home and in exile.

Mr Solzhenitsyn's widow Natalia and his sons looked on as people, many of them elderly, brought small bouquets of white or red flowers to lay before his coffin.

In keeping with Russian tradition, mourners brought an even number of flowers, usually two or four.

"Mr Solzhenitsyn was one of the most important people in the history of Russia, he wrote exactly what he thought and needed to be remembered," said maths professor Alexander Romanov, 60.

Russia's main television channels ran lengthy reports on their evening news programmes and unscheduled documentaries on Mr Solzhenitsyn's life.

But not all media reports remembered Mr Solzhenitsyn kindly. The Communist party newspaper Pravda called him a radical critic who produced one-sided accounts of Stalin's rule.

"He became one of the main battering rams in destroying both the state and nation ... that is why he is being applauded so rapturously by both Russian President Medvedev and US President Bush!" it wrote in a commentary on Tuesday.