McCain Stealing from Solzhenitsyn?

Some bloggers think so. During the recent Civil Forum at Saddleback Church, Senator John McCain related an experience from his days as a prisoner of war in Vietnam:

It was Christmas Day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes, and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other although we certainly did. And I was standing outside for a few minutes, outside my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute and with his handle [sic] on the dirt in the courtyard he drew a cross and he stood there and a minute later, he rubbed it out and walked away. For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that moment.

And here's what Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

Cool coincidence or plagiaristic pandering?