Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008

On Sunday Russia lost one of its true patriots, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was a powerful voice of dissent during the last decades of the existence of the Soviet regime. His writings, most importantly The Gulag Archipelago, opened the world's eyes to the crimes of the Soviet Commissars. He was a tireless crusader for freedom.

Anne Applebaum, writing for the New York Times, discussed the impact Solzhenitsyn's writings had on the Russian people. She wrote: "In the week of his death, though, what stands out is not who Solzhenitsyn was but what he wrote. It is very easy, in a world where news is instant and photographs travel as quickly as they are taken, to forget how powerful, still, are written words. And Solzhenitsyn was, in the end, a writer: A man who gathered facts, sorted through them, tested them against his own experience, composed them into paragraphs and chapters. It was not his personality but his language that forced people to think more deeply about their values, their assumptions, their societies. It was not his television appearances that affected history but his words...His manuscripts were read and pondered in silence, and the thought he put into them provoked his readers to think, too. In the end, his books mattered not because he was famous or notorious but because millions of Soviet citizens recognized themselves in his work: They read his books because they already knew that they were true." (Full article)

The editors of National Review Online stated: "The hope Solzhenitsyn gave to millions is immeasurable — but we can measure some of it. There is a woman, Youquin Wang, who chronicles China’s Cultural Revolution. She does this from the safety of the United States. But, as a girl, she was less safe. Back in the PRC, she found two authors who changed her life: Anne Frank and Solzhenitsyn. After she read The Gulag, she knew what she would do with her life: commit the lives of the lost to historical memory....National Review is grateful to have had a relationship with Solzhenitsyn. Mainly, we admired and cheered him. But occasionally we published him — he once sent us a piece over the transom, which is to say, unsolicited. No magazine could dream of more....Malcolm Muggeridge called him “the noblest human being alive.” After passing away yesterday, he is now one of the noblest human beings on earth or in heaven. He is one of the greatest witnesses in all history. And, like all great witnesses, he was inspired by love, the crowning quality of his work and life." (Full article)