Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
-(1918 – 2008)
-Russian author
-Russian Orthodox, Christian worldview
Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia. He studied math at Rostov University and the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History. During World War II, he served as a commander in the Soviet Army and a decorated hero. In 1945, he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in private correspondence and was sentenced to an eight-year term in the Russian labor camps called the Gulags. He lost his citizenship and settled in Vermont in the United States. Later, his citizenship was restored, and he returned to Russia, where he remained until his death. The experience of the labor camps provided him with raw material for the books he wrote. Solzhenitsyn’s writings force people to think more deeply about their values, assumptions, and societies, and in 1970, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his work on The Gulag Archipelago ….read more at The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center.
His religious views: Like most pre-Soviet Russia, Solzhenitsyn was born into a Christian tradition and baptized as a child. However, as Marxism took hold throughout the country, atheism became Aleksandr’s worldview. It was in the prison camp, when undergoing treatment and surgery for cancer, that Solzhenitsyn came to turn from atheism to embrace Christianity fully. Read more at C.S. Lewis Institute, Profiles in Faith.
The Gulag Archipelago and The Wisdom of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: This video examines some of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's fascinating insights on communism, the nature of evil, and the power of truth.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Courage to be Christian by Joseph Pearce (article) - Solzhenitsyn published three novels exposing secularist tyranny, but the Christian has nothing to fear but his falling into the pride of despair. If he avoids becoming despondent and retains his humility, he will receive the gift of hope, which is its fruit; where there is hope, there is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Why We Need God: Solzhenitsyn’s The Red Wheel by Intercollegiate Studies Institute (article) - controversial Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn blames many of the atrocities of the twentieth century on one cause: “We have forgotten God.” He criticizes Tolstoy’s interpretation of Christ’s message and argues that the Christian maxim to love thy neighbor undermines people’s spirit to resist evil if applied literally.
‘Men Have Forgotten God’: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 Templeton Address (article) - Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1983. He gave this acceptance speech in London at Buckingham Palace and the London Guildhall.
Solzhenitsyn’s Controversial 1978 Harvard Commencement Address (video + article) - Truth is seldom sweet and almost invariably bitter. This speech includes a measure of bitter truth, but he offers it “as a friend, not as an adversary.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Confronts the Grand Inquisitor from the Christian Research Institute (article)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Revealing the Gulag by BBC (audio) - Solzhenitsyn survived the brutal conditions of a gulag in Kazakhstan, and it was this harrowing experience that provided the impetus for his best-known works
Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970 by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (article) - One day, Dostoevsky made the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world.” What sort of a statement is that? For a long time, I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Solzhenitsyn refers to Dostoevsky four times in his speech.
When Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote his 2100-page Gulag Archipelago and published it in late December 1973, he attempted an impossible task: To give the millions of people who fell victim to the communist regime under Stalin a voice and make their events heard. How does he do that? By telling stories in a grand multitude of the infinite moments of suffering happening behind the doors of the Gulags.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, perhaps the most significant Russian author of the twentieth century, was an Orthodox Christian existentialist, a direct descendant of Dostoevsky's thinking, and a man who took a mighty axe to the terrible tangled roots of communist totalitarianism. He associated inauthentic being on the part of the individual within society with the direct degeneration of that society into tyranny and hostility.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He challenges both the ills of communism and of the West. In this speech, you will find a man of courage telling the truth as it is in a transparent exposition. This world needs more men like this!
“Let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam it shut right now. . . . If only it were so simple! If only it were true that there exist evil people insidiously committing evil deeds, whom it is necessary simply to separate out and destroy. But the line dividing good from evil cuts through the heart of every human being. . . . This line is not static within us; it sways to and fro over the years. Even in a heart imbued with evil, it allows a small bridgehead of good to remain. And it permits a small niche of evil to survive even in the kindest of hearts.”
The Gulag Archipelago (3-book series) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago is an account based on Solzhenitsyn’s eight years in Soviet prison camps. The work represents the author’s attempt to compile a literary and historical record of the Soviet regime’s deeply irrational use of terror against its population. It is based on the reports, memoirs, and letters of 227 witnesses. It is a testimonial to Stalinist atrocities and devastated readers outside the Soviet Union with its descriptions of the brutality of the Soviet regime. The first two volumes describe victims' arrest, conviction, transport, and imprisonment from 1918 to 1956. The third volume documents attempted escapes and subversions from within the system.
The book is about the ascent of the human spirit and its struggle with evil. That is why readers feel pain, anger, and an upsurge of strength and light when they reach the end of the work.
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