Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One of the greats

Mr. Solzhenitsyn was not simply a formidable critic of a failed political ideology, he also provided an alternative worldview. His writings were rooted in an Orthodox Christian faith that he grasped viscerally, from experience in suffering with Christ. During his eight years as a prisoner in the gulag (1945-53), he came to understand the fundamental beauty and paradox of Christian teaching: The worst of times - or the greatest suffering - are also the best of times. There, in his tiny cell, as he wrote in the "Gulag Archipelago," he was closer to the beatific Christian vision than he had ever been before, or ever would be. Years afterward, when he came into the full light of freedom, he longed for that cell, that cell in which he ascended toward God and found his greatest serenity. It is ultimately Mr. Solzhenitsyn's grasp of such eternal verities that will render his work enduring for centuries to come.

-Washington Times

Others blogging with Solzhenitsyn quotes include:

Pajamas Media with this prescient one about the Vietnam War:

The most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear?

American Digest highlights this one on what is missing in the West today:

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end? -- Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address, 1978

And finally, from the much missed Alice The Camel: 

It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.... That is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: “Bless you, prison!” I...have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!” (The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, Vol. 2, 615-617)

 

Comments

[Tim Chesterton]

Thanks for posting this, Rick. I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward years ago (when i was in high school, I think!!!); I tried to get through The Gulag Archipelago but found it too much for me. But Solzhenitsyn was both a great writer and a man of immense courage, as the Post points out. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

[Mommynator]

I read most of his books through high school and college. They had a HUGE impact on my thinking because at the time, I was the proverbial skull full of mush. His courage was not only inspirational, but made me wonder if I could stand up to oppression with any semblance of it.