1,759 words
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn seemed to write novels like a historian. It’s as if he didn’t always know which details were more important than others, and so erred on the side of quantity rather than quality. Not that his novels don’t contain great stuff – rather, they tend to lead the reader through long and uneven passages in between the moments of greatness. Read more …
On Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Warning to the West
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3,604 words
And all of us are standing on the brink of a great historical cataclysm, a flood that swallows up civilization and changes whole epochs.
–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, BBC speech, March 24, 1976
In the summer of 1975, the recently-exiled Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered three speeches in the United States: two to labor organizations and one to Congress. The following year, he was interviewed by the BBC and then delivered a speech over British radio. Read more …