Remembering Solzhenitsyn: Observations on the Gospel, socialism, and power

So, were we any better?

Soviet communism had just marked its first birthday when Solzhenitsyn was born. He grew up knowing nothing else.

Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another.

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

From The Gulag Archipelago:

Oh, Western freedom-loving "left-wing" thinkers! Oh, left-wing laborists! Oh, American, German and French progressive students! All of this is still not enough for you. The whole book has been useless for you. You will understand everything immediately, when you yourself — "hands behind the back" — toddle into our Archipelago.

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The book [The Gulag Archipelago] was an instant sensation, and the rest is great history. The Soviet Union would never be the same. It disappeared less than 20 years later under the weight of its own inherent evil, from the challenge of domestic opposition emboldened in part by Solzhenitsyn and because of international pressure from Westerners including Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.