{"id":3842,"date":"2008-08-07T04:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T04:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3842"},"modified":"2025-09-30T01:07:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T01:07:54","slug":"more-opinion-pieces-on-alexandr-solzhenitsyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3842","title":{"rendered":"Further thoughts on Alexandr Solzhenitsyn"},"content":{"rendered":"

I previously posted stuff here Tom Faranda's Folly: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn<\/font><\/a> and here Tom Faranda's Folly: More on Solzhenitsyn<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

Go here for additional reflections -<\/p>\n

Solzhenitsyn and His Critics – The Acton Institute<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

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Solzhenitsyn\u2019s critique of modern societies went much deeper than ideology. He drew from a Christian moral tradition, not a political platform. He yearned for a \u201cmoral doctrine of the value of the individual as the key to the solution of the social problems.\u201d <\/p>\n

The solution for Russia, he wrote in 1974, lay in its willingness to take on a \u201cdeliberate, voluntary sacrifice,\u201d not in the name of a collective society but by each and every person, uniquely made in the image of God.<\/p>\n

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A society so vicious and polluted, implicated in so many of the crimes of these last fifty years — by its lies, by its servility either willingly or enforced, by its eagerness to assist or its cowardly restraint — such a society can only be cured and purified by passing through a spiritual filter. And this filter is a terrible one, with holes as fine as the eye of a needle, each big enough for only one person.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Solzhenitsyn understood this as a national spiritual renewal — even spiritual battle. This, he believed, was how a sick society gained the path to moral soundness. Material well-being, intellectual accomplishments, technological breakthroughs, captivating new ideologies would not cure the sickness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And here – <\/p>\n

Of Good and Evil – WSJ.com<\/strong><\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

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For the rest of his life, Solzhenitsyn engaged in what he called "a struggle with falsehood," caring not a whit what his critics thought. His 1978 Harvard commencement speech solidified his reputation as a prickly recluse. But his diagnosis of threats to the West — not least those from within — remains bracing.<\/p>\n

Solzhenitsyn warned of "an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses," and a "tilt of freedom in the direction of evil . . . evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature." His own prison-camp experience after World War II told him evil was all too real and had to be confronted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I previously posted stuff here Tom Faranda's Folly: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and here Tom Faranda's Folly: More on Solzhenitsyn Go here for additional reflections - Solzhenitsyn and His Critics – The Acton Institute Solzhenitsyn\u2019s critique of modern societies went much deeper than ideology. He drew from a Christian moral tradition, not a political platform. He yearned for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6722,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions\/6722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}