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Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2008 > August > 03 > Entry
RIP Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Just heard that Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn, the great voice of anti-Soviet outrage and dissent, has died at the age of 89.
Here’s the story from the NY Times…
There are few books that made as much of an impression on my young mind as “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” which I read in a junior high English class about the literature of repression. Our teacher also had us read Orwell, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” and Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” and wanted us to see how governments could hurt people as much as help them… A good lesson to learn at that age. “Denisovich” was the easiest to read, but the most disturbing, of the lot. It’s stuck with me ever since.
When Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” came out in the 1970s, it was all the rage in my liberal college town among my teachers and the parents of my college prof friends, whom I overheard discussing it at length; they were stunned and moved by its descriptions of the horrors of the Soviet political prison system, and when I dipped into the massive books in college, I understood why.
Here’s to one of the great minds, great voices and great brave hearts of our modern era… It is just, proper and fitting that he outlived the awful regime he helped bring down by his honesty, bravery and writing. You wonder about the power of words? Of language, and writing? Wonder not. Solzhenitsyn didn’t. Thank goodness.
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By John white
August 3, 2008 10:34 PM | Link to this
Well said Ron. You mentioned two of the greatest works that helped caused the big fall of the curtain. I suspect it was his intense loyalty and love of his Christian faith that sustained him.