One of the towering figures of the 20th Century has died. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian historian, philosopher, and author whose epic The Gulag Archipelago exposed the West to the horrors of Soviet tyranny inside their forced labor camps. One source described him thusly: "Driven, principled, frequently arrogant, a bearded figure with the fierce visage of a prophet, Mr. Solzhenitsyn (sohl-zheh-NEETS-ihn) was regarded as one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 20th century." Christian leader Charles Colson once compared Solzhenitsyn to the prophet Jeremiah after the Russian sage lambasted his Harvard audience for among other things allowing man to become "the master of this world … who bears no evil within himself...So all the defects of life" are attributed to "wrong social systems."
It's difficult to overestimate the affect The Gulag Archipelago had on shaping the mind of the West toward the Soviet Union. Historians credit Solzhenitsyn along with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II with framing the moral and ideological case against the Soviet Union. Before you go, read two pieces. One from Charles Colson about Solzhenitsyn at Harvard and the second is an editorial that ran in a Canadian newspaper following his death. It can be found here.
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