The story.
And a flashback from the great, plain-speaking author:
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.
Winston Churchill was often very, very alone. 1 bad person at the top and the empire is ruined.
My Mom took me to see ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ when I was 10ish. Today, I wonder if that could be possibly considered child abuse.
If seeing One day in the life is child abuse, we could use a lot more of it with the kids of today. They are fat lazy wimps who are on their way to becoming fat lazy socialists. Not all, but most.
Our only hope is that one day there is a revolt by the courageous class and we turn it around before the courageous lunatics of Islam turn it around for us.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Christian. Not incidental.
Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord.
And may light perpetual shine upon him.
May he rest in peace.
Amen.
This is my favourite Alexander Solzhenitsyn aphorism:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from mistaken conviction.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 address to the Harvard Graduating Class:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
There was a time that I was a great admirer of Solzhenitsyn. He was a man of moral courage in his time and place and is a great writer. That said, he never really trusted a free and open society. In his years in exile in the US, he was totally incurious about us. He expressed a distrusted of capitalism. He never examined the political or cultural foundation of our democracy. He completely missed why the US was a successful democracy. His Harvard Commencement speech was a shocking slap in the face. It laid bare his total distain for a free and open press. It deserves being re-read.
The last few years he’s been a Useful Idiot for Putin. He approved publically his vertical power structure and never opened his mouth when the press was being systemically returned to the state. He always expressed that Russia would be better served by a benigh autocrat which makes him a very flawed man and certainly not an asset to this younger generation of Russians. He died having lost every ounce of his moral authority as far as I’m concerned.
well done penny.
It is a curiosity Penny.
That when he found near total freedom in the USA from all the tyranny he had known in the old Soviet Union, it was too much for him. No part of his life was led in freedom until he arrived here.
I read many (not all yet) of his books, the entire gulag, warning to the west, one day in the life of Ivan, august 1914, first circle, and cancer ward.. and I wondered what he would say if given the chance to say anything at all…
Well he had that chance, and seemed to be stuck in awe at what we have here, how our freedom is (was?) virtually unrestrained.
Having so many choices to make, was it too much like a kid in the candy store except with this freedom we have here, it is our life that is beyond freedoms normal choices? They never once had to decide if it will be chicken or beef today.
His questions regarding “our will”, our spine here in the west… these now seem to be asked everyday in our fight against the islamic tyranny. At least by our liberal press.
I read his books on and off, from the time I was 16 to the time I was about 25. A time when many of my peers were openly toying with the idea of socialism having a viable future in our hearts.
So his works helped shape my opinions concerning our freedom, and what is tyranny, seeing what socialism is capable of when fully unleashed. And for that I thank him although he remains a flawed hero…
On my first visit to the high school library (Sept.1975), there were two books on a display table: One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Volume One of the Bandy Papers, by Donald Jack.
I knew – if only secondhand from teachers and newspapers – that Solzhenitsyn was an Important World Literary Figure, and that I should read him.
There was a Sopwith Camel on the other book.
I chose Bandy, and have never regretted it. My path to grasping the worth of the individual and evil inherent in statism took a different way, but I got there in the end.
Perhaps Solzhenitsyn’s greatest value lies in the fact that he pushed forward any search for enlightenment without one’s ever having had to read him: he made it impossible for anyone, ever, to claim with a straight face that any good came out of Stalin’s Russia.
“socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death”
A key point made in his Harvard address. Doubtless our Western countries were built in an environment where risk existed, and we had to be spiritually strong to face it. Then we voted in a comparatively rich lifestyle for even for the poorest in our society through lush social programs. As predicted by Solzhenitsyn, the spiritual strength of our citizens drained away as risk abated.
It continues to drain away, and will do so until life becomes risky again. The nanny state will die, and if history is any guide it will be a horrible death. Sadly, we seem to lack the will here in Canada to arrest the slide.
The growth in government interference in our lives is like an aggressive cancer. Perhaps with a majority the conservatives can drive that cancer into remission. Certainly, we know all other parties in the spectrum want it to spread as rapidly as possible.
Permit me some musing, please.
Tyranny and freedom are not the flip sides of a coin…they are two points on a line. They are somewhat like black and white…there are many shades of grey in between…but what lies beyond tyranny to the left and freedom to the right?
Beyond freedom lies anarchy.
We are all aware of the stupidity that exists in world, the growing stupidity of many our fellow travellers in the west…what I have heard referred to as “the creeping dumb”.
Perhaps Solzhenitsyn simply viewed the freedom of the west as being too far to the right…encroaching too far towards anarchy. Wouldn’t a population of FOOLS, for example, fare better with LESS freedom and MORE control?
Capitalism is the best of a bad bunch of choices when it comes to political systems…it is NOT perfect. We must flavour capitalism with a tiny amount of socialism…but Canada has added too much socialism to the mix and we are subject to too much control, which is unevenly applied.
Perhaps, with Solzhenitsyn knowing the Russian people better than we, he believes there is an inherent weakness in their national psyche that demands more control be applied, more political rigidity, less democracy.
Just musing.
A collection from the MSM here:
“Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose books told the horrors of the Soviet gulag system, is dead at 89 … Telegraph … AP … AFP … London Times … Irish Times … BBC … Guardian … NYT … Der Spiegel … 1978 Harvard speech … Putin & Gorbachev … old Buckley column … Daily Mail … Guardian … Moscow Times … Time”
http://www.aldaily.com/
Capitalism isn’t a political system. Capitalism is what free people do when they are left alone.
There have been many accounts of the horrors under the Chinese version of Communism, but unfortunately no one, as far as I know, became renowned as Solzhenitsyn and his accounts of the Soviet gulags did. A great shame.
Such suffering he chronciled! I remember the scene from Nadezhada Madelstam’s Hope Against Hope where a woman waiting in line in the bitter cold to see her prisoner husband recognized the writer and asked her “Can you capture this for us?” and Madelstam replied: “Yes, I can.”
I read Vol I of “The Gulag Archipelago” when I was sixteen. It made a profound impression on me and started to disabuse me of my youthful utopian socialist ideas by pointing out the true costs of socialism and the bureaucratic tyranny necessary for its implementation as well as the brutal depravity of which human beings are capable. It helped me understand many of the older people in my home town in northern Quebec, a significant portion of whom were east European immigrants who had fled Stalinist Russia.
I got the sense that Solzhenitsyn’s condemnation of the west came, not from our freedom, but rather from what we’ve chosen to do with our freedom, the lack of spirituality, an almost amoral indulgence of comfortable, simple-minded materialism to the abandonment of the spiritual growth of which we are capable. Solzhenitsyn was a spiritual man who saw human spiritual growth in the most difficult circumstances imaginable. I think it frustrated and revolted him to see us (in his eyes) squander our freedom in trivial pursuits. He was a patriarchal genius who frustrates and angers us by his apparent contradictions.
Solzhenitsyn was above all a spiritual person uncomfortable with the choices of either the extreme left or the extreme right, both of which he saw as extensions of the same materialistic outlook. Those who criticize him for endorsing Putin should peruse photos of recent gay “celebrations” here in the West. Do you like what you see?
Viewing Solzhenitsyn in political terms misses the essence and complexity of the man. I think the following quote gets closer to his heart: “If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life”.
Solzhenitsyn was consistantly critical of the west’s deference to machinations of overbearing statism. He saw the west as the last hope for free men and he spent the post 60’s era warning us how our bureaucracy and leaders where erecting replicas of soviet civil tyranny in our administrative functions.
I will miss the cautioning reason of this watchdog against creeping statism, I’m sure his passing is a relief to the social engineers in the west.
I went to see the play One Day In the Life of Ivan Dinesovitch when I was in high school. I didn’t like it. It was harsh, unpleasant. I decided I’d go down fighting rather than see that happen to me.
Today I have lived to see our very own government, which I held to be good and honest for so long as a young man, start down that road toward the gulag. I’ll still go down fighting.
I’d say Alexander Solzhenitsyn got the job done with that play, regardless of anything else he may have done or not done in his life.
RIP.
Whatever his limitations, Solzhenitsyn was an excellent author and a man of great courage. To be one of those is extraordinary; to be both, almost unheard-of. Moreover, his books played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.
RIP, Mr. Solzhenitsyn. We miss you.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s courage in the face of Soviet brutality was exceptional. His uncompromising voice helped to liberate his people from the bondage under Soviet rule. How many of us are willing to risk our security, comfort and possibly even our lives to speak out against the erosion of our freedom that is steadily taking place in our own society?
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconfield and former British Primer Minister (1868, 1874-80)described the cycle it most succinctly:
“Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”
According to this, we are pretty close to the last stages of freedom, where we can easily fall back into bondage again.
“I chose Bandy, and have never regretted it.”
Those books were great! Read them about twenty years ago, and the phrase “high grade machine oil” still pops into my head at steamy moments.
I, like many commentators here, read all of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s books. The three Gulags took a long time to read because it was emotionally draining to read page after page of terrorist, state regulated, destruction of human souls. In Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn states that he had compromised to survive – this probably haunted him to the end of his life on earth.
The overreaction of the west probably got his goat. He had lived in the Soviet Union and he saw the west using rules that Stalin had used to stamp out the soul of the Russian people. When he issued a warning it was not understood by the west, consequently the man reacted.
The silence in the western world while the Russian people were being terrorized/tortured/striped of their souls every day of their lives was deafening; the smugness of a peaceful nation going down the socialist path would have grated on the nerves of anyone who had been through that system.
Most people in the west have not read much about WWI, Solzhenitsyn knew all about WWI; he wrote 1918 – in this book he relates the Russian situation in WWI. Russia was bled blue when the Bolsheviks took over; the Bolsheviks were backed by the Axis and were SENT to Russia by the German government – Lenin was sent in a closed German railroad car from Geneva to break the will of the Russian soldiers. Lenin called religion the ‘opium of the people’ and dissolved the morals of the people of Russia. People without a conscience can go evil very fast – the Russian people were already exhausted and starved so they went over very fast.
Solzenitzen probably found it incredible that the west could go evil without the scourges that sent many Russian people to the Dark side. Something that the people of the west should think about, IMO.
Solzenitzen was once a Communist and an officer in the Red Army. He ‘fell’ for the socialist rhetoric once believing that he and his family would be safe and fed because he was in the elite crowd; what must he have thought when he saw the same ‘mind set’ in the pampered people of the west?
RIP Mr. Solzenitzen.
Yes, Solzenitsyn, was a great man, who challenged all of us. (Of course, that’s why he was often unpopular.)
When Jema54 mentioned his importance to the fall of Communism in Russia, it occurred to me that a second key player in this watershed was another who had lived under the jackboot of tryanny: Pope John Paul II. It also occurred to me that they were both “muscular” Christians, which is, IMO, no coincidence.
But Christianity continues to get a bum rap everywhere in the West. I think that’s why we’re actually already in the bondage stage, mentioned in TeeJay’s post, above.
(Below are the words of the simple, but very moving four part “hymn”, The Russian Kontakion of the Departed. It is written for SATB, Kiev melody: very Rrr-ussian!
The “Give rest, O Christ . . . ” section is repeated at the end, with the basses [who can!] dropping the octave. Its deep and haunting beauty makes one’s hair stand on end.)
For Aleksandr, child of God:
“Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints:
where sorrow and pain are no more;
neither sighing, but life everlasting.
“Thou only art immortal, the Creator and Maker of man:
and we are mortal, formed of the earth,
and unto earth shall we return:
for so thou didst ordain,
when thou createdst me saying:
“‘Dust thou art und unto dust shalt thou return.’
All we go down to the dust;
and weeping o’er the grave we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”
Thanks, TeeJay, for these words of Disraeli’s:
“Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”
I think we’re pretty much in the bondage stage, in bondage to material wealth and comfort, to our own apathy, to our socialist/statist overlords.
The next stage, if it isn’t the outright fall of Western Civilization is a return to “spiritual truth,” which we have been Hell bent for leather on eschewing, ridiculing, scoffing at, and ignoring to our eternal peril.
Sadly, we in the West–something that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood only too well and wasn’t afraid to articulate–are so complacent and have so quickly shucked our spiritual heritage and memory that it’s not inconceivable that we could lose everything.
People scoff at that view: “Surely,” they say, “things have got to get better? Things will probably improve. They have to.”
There’s no “having to” about it. I always ask why they are so sure. Why couldn’t our decadent, me-first, selfish, complacent, asleep-at-the-wheel, Godless society crash and burn? The Greek and Roman Civilizations fell. Why couldn’t ours?
Very few want to hear this message, but I am grateful to Solzhenitsyn that he never let up on it. He insisted on the reality and importance of man’s spiritual nature and cautioned us about the cost of ignoring it.
He’d been there and seen it. He’d tasted it, touched it, smelled it, and suffered it.
‘Suffered for it too.
batb, I entirely agree with your analysis.
God help us.
Sometimes we ascribe more lasting wisdom to a famous person, or writer, than we should. Sometimes that wisdom appears to vapourize when later words or actions do not seem consistent with the image we once had made.
Because one writes much wisdom, must he continue to follow that wisdom? Does an intelligent and wise mind remain intelligent and wise as body, mind, and soul age? Or, finds itself in a different context? Do our opinions make us wiser than the famously wise? How close to divinity was Solzhenitsyn? How insignificant was his residual “small corner of evil”?
He wrote that the line separating good from evil through every person’s heart, oscillates with the years.
Mortal flesh, including its utopias and political arrangements, in the final analysis, cannot attain perfection. As the lyrics of an ancient liturgy (St. James, 4th century) pray, the mundane is to be replaced by an all comprehensive homage to the Way, the Truth, and the Life…
“King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
…”
Some have criticized Solzhenitsyn’s support for a free democracy once he had arrived in the World’s prime example of a free democracy. Perhaps his newly found reality of freedom in democracy did not match up to what he had in mind? Perhaps the blinding light of a that freedom was too much? Not too much for its anticipated goodnesses, but too much for its surprises of evil.
Somehow evil exists within the bounds and risks of freedom. Somehow the One God whose mercies endure unto the ages of ages permits the existence of evil.
Before our time evil existed, and persisted; we cannot know its origin. What we do know in our time is that any states, any classes, any political parties, any persons are not, and cannot be, perfect. Solzhenitsyn takes us to that place where a greater vista exists: a greater expectation, a greater hope that transcends all the mundane wretchedness and shortcomings of perfection. Perhaps, that was the music of his lyrics: an apophatic sense of truth not captured by reason, example, or objectivication: rather, faith stirred by that remaining “small bridgehead of good” as a projection to, and for, a greatness beyond which nothing has been, or could be, conceived.
In that parallel (and present) time the lyrics of that ancient liturgy promise and pray:
“As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.”
Solzhenitsyn gave to us in black on white a glimpse of what the Church teaches in its full regalia of lucidity and colour.
Amen, noel.
And, thank you.
AP’s 38 paragraph obit makes no mention of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Christian faith:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2008/08/04/ap-obit-solzhenitsyn-ignores-his-christian-faith
Penny says: “He never examined the political or cultural foundation of our democracy. He completely missed why the US was a successful democracy. His Harvard Commencement speech was a shocking slap in the face.”
On the contrary, I believe that Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard address reminded Americans then, and us today what actually is the foundation for the United State’s success. “One Nation Under God”. Solzhenitsyn understood that a “free and open society” is only possible when built upon the sufficient foundation of the transcendent truth. Today, people in the West are enjoying the “free and open” part, but are also undermining the foundations of human dignity. Solzhenitsyn knew from experience the logical end of such a course, and we are not immune from it. A free and open society must be the outcome of believing and acting on the truth: it can never succeed as an end in itself. Otherwise, freedom becomes nothing more than personal peace and prosperity, at the expense of all other values. There is more than one type of tyranny against which we must fight.
Thank you, noel.
‘No surprise about AP ignoring Solzhenitsyn’s Christian faith as the foundatiion of his witness: just another day in the life of the apostate West, leading to, to misquote “Let All Mortal Flesh”:
“Rank on rank the host of Hades spreads its vanguard on the way/As the black of night descendeth to blot out the light of day/ So the powers of hell will vanquish, as Darkness leads the way.” Of course, prophets with such a message have always been scorned and often martryed: Truth is hard to take.
Kyrie eleison.
Amen, Rudy. Thanks.
Rudy said: “A free and open society must be the outcome of believing and acting on the truth…”
lookout said: “Truth is hard to take.”
From the Obit in the National Review:
[begin quote]
Truth was the essential ingredient of his controversial 1978 commencement address at Harvard: “A World Split Apart.” He told the graduates, “[T]ruth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.”
Solzhenitsyn went on to discuss the multiple ailments of the West.
[end quote]
I enjoyed the comments of Noel, batb, lookout & rudy. Penny not so much. It’s easy to criticise when one doesn’t have to walk a mile in the other person’s mocassins. Like someone pointed out, Aleks had never known the freedom which was in the west, had never had to make choices about chicken or beef (to illustrate that choices were few and far between for USSR-ians) and that we cannot really fathom. Being human, yes he was flawed, but looking at the sum of all parts, he was magnificent in his unrelenting courage to not conform to what everyone expected, in his fight vs totalitarianism, and his “telling it like it is” at Harvard 30 yr ago.