On the Death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who had more to do with stripping any trace of legitimacy from the Soviet system than any other human, died yesterday at the age of 89. Solzhenitsyn had lived a life so remarkable that it almost defies belief. Born in 1918 into a world convulsed by revolutionary upheaval, Solzhenitsyn later served in the Red Army as an artillery officer in the Second World War, and saw war in its most brutal form. Arrested for a trivial criticism of Joseph Stalin (in a letter), he spent eight bitter years in the hideous Soviet penal system and three more in internal exile. Diagnosed with cancer during his term of exile, he experienced the full depths of Soviet "medical care".  Utterly transformed by these experiences, he decided to take on the profoundly evil and corrupt Soviet government. He began a remarkable career as a writer. He exposed the brutality of the Soviet camp system, especially in his massive, epic work, The Gulag Archipelago, one of the great achievements of the 20th century. Gulag opened the eyes of millions of people everywhere to the obscenities of Stalinism and delegitimized Communism more thoroughly than any other written work ever has. For that reason alone Solzhenitsyn would be remembered as a significant historical figure. But he also won the Nobel Prize for literature in recognition of his towering novels, such as Cancer Ward.  Exiled from the USSR in 1974, he continued his campaign, from his new home in the United States, against the alien system that had devastated his native country . After Communism's long overdue collapse, he returned to Russia to live out the rest of his life.

In his latter years, Solzhenitsyn became increasingly anti-democratic in his orientation, more a traditional Russian Orthodox figure in many ways, and a harsh critic of the "degenerate" West. But none of this should detract from his greatness. Solzhenitsyn was able to achieve what he did because he was afraid of absolutely nothing. And really, after all he had been through, what terrors could life throw at him? He will always be remembered as a giant of world literature and one of the great figures of his time. I will always be grateful to him, and he will always stand with Andrei Sakharov as one of my heroes in the struggle for human decency and human justice.