Introduction

While serving the Soviet Army during WWII, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote a personal letter to a friend in which he criticized Stalin’s war strategy and referred to him as “the whiskered one.” For that offense Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in the Gulag.


That experience, together with his subsequent exile, forms the core of his work. In 1970 he won the Noble Prize for literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature."

When Solzhenitsyn died last August (‘08) I was reminded of his infamous Harvard address, the first – and last – invitation he received to speak at the school. In rereading it, I was shaken by the near prescience of his leveling criticisms.

That’s not to say that he forecast events like a modern-day Nostradamus. Rather, the view from here, some 30 years later, suggests that the cultural trends that Solzhenitsyn analyzed in 1978 have, in many ways, developed along the lines he traced in this speech. He was wrong on some of the details: He didn’t anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example. Perhaps Reagan and Thatcher were examples of the kind of trend-changing leaders that Solzhenitsyn had hoped would emerge from that Harvard graduating class.

That blind-spot notwithstanding (and who can criticize such a blind-spot; in 1978 no one foresaw the Soviet collapse), Solzhenitsyn’s speech echoes back to us with a growing tag line: “I told you so.”

On this label, I will post sections of Solzhenitsyn’s speech along with my own limited commentary. Feel free to add your own, for the intention is to solicit discussion of Solzhenitsyn’s themes and their implications. Perhaps his echoing voice will ripple out into our social consciousness and inspire the personal courage and fortitude that he had hoped to stir in those Harvard graduates.

You can find a transcript of Solzhenitsyn's Harvard adress here:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html