His message echoed the popes’
Which echoes the Gospel about moral truths.
WSJ gives us Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s words, at Harvard. Where they weren’t exactly warmly received.
Very well-known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: We cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism’s well-planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. . . .
WaPo’s tribute honors his work as a champion of the human spirit.
Driven, principled, frequently arrogant, a bearded figure with the fierce visage of a prophet, Solzhenitsyn was regarded as one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 20th century.
Like Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the 19th century masters of Russian letters, his subject was considered to be the struggle between good and evil in the Russian soul. The line separating the two, he said, ran through every heart.
Fr. de Souza’s column notes what the modern world must remember, that Sozhenitsyn’s was a critical voice against an ideology of moral failure — just like JPII and Benedict. Call things what they are.
His argument was that communism needed the gulag, not as some ancillary measure, but as the logical consequence of its assault on human conscience, dignity and liberty. When Ronald Reagan delivered his evil empire speech ten years after The Gulag Archipelago was published, he was summarizing Solzhenitsyn’s argument. Communism was not only economically inefficient, politically destabilizing and imperially expansive–it was evil.
In his own words…as it turned out, the last interview published.
Q: And your strength did not leave you even in moments of desperation?
Solzhenitsyn: Yes. I would often think: whatever the outcome is going to be, let it be. And then things would turn out all right. It looks like some good came out of it…
I was always optimistic. And I held to and was guided by my views.
Q: What views?
Solzhenitsyn: Of course, my views developed in the course of time. But I have always believed in what I did and never acted against my conscience.
Q: All your life you have called on the authorities to repent for the millions of victims of the gulag and communist terror. Was this call really heard?
Solzhenitsyn: I have grown used to the fact that public repentance is the most unacceptable option for the modern politician.
Read this man’s works. Like all great thinking, based on transcendent truth, it is timeless.