Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet dissident who, through his writings and speeches profoundly critiqued the Communist government of his homeland, has died. He was 89.

Solzhenitsyn was not only sharply critical of totalitarianism, but he brought his incredible intellect to bear on the excesses of Western society, as well as the shallow citizens it can tend to produce.

One of my favorite Solzhenitsyn quotes comes from the famous speech he gave at Harvard University in 1978:

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being. Therefore if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

How true indeed.

+ + + + + + +

Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 6:59 am and is filed under People, Political Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.