Solzhenitsyn: Voice in the Wildernesses

Everyone, no doubt, has heard of the passing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn this weekend. In 2001, I wrote a bit about him in a fundraising letter, reflecting on Joseph Pearce's then-new book, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile (Baker Books, 2001):

[Pearce] writes about the earthquake set off by the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich just a month after the Cuban missile crisis. Novy Mir (New World) published the novel in November 1962 with the approval of the Soviet government, including the hearty support of Nikita Kruschev. Little did they know what they were getting themselves into!

The book was an instant sell-out and went immediately into a second printing. Solzhenitsyn, an unknown writer, a schoolteacher who had served an eight-year sentence in the gulag for making disparaging comments about Stalin in letters to a friend, became an instant celebrity. Letters poured in from former political prisoners, elated that someone had told the truth about Stalin’s slave-labor camps. Pearce writes:

Clearly One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had touched a raw nerve. As its impact resounded throughout the Soviet Union, from the grandeur of the Kremlin to the humble homes of former prisoners, Solzhenitsyn contemplated the power his novel had unleashed. “If the first tiny droplet of truth has exploded like a psychological bomb, what then will happen in our country when whole waterfalls of Truth burst forth?”

After 1962 the flow of truth continued. Solzhenitsyn, with the help of many friends and allies, continued to publish, often underground, prior to his forced exile in 1974. The cracks created in the Soviet regime by the labors of Solzhenitsyn and his friends eventually combined with other forces—Solzhenitsyn gives much credit to John Paul II—to bring about the Soviet collapse.

We at Touchstone share Solzhenitsyn’s wonder at the power of truth in the face of lies. But truth doesn’t always gain a hearing easily. Today we face a struggle that Solzhenitsyn saw clearly enough during his exile in the West. For our culture and society have fallen prey to the demons of materialism, secularism, and consumerism—all built on lies about God and man.

Pearce writes, “In essence, [Solzhenitsyn] said, both [capitalism and socialism] have common materialistic roots and are therefore, of necessity, at loggerheads with Christianity.” The British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge approvingly described Solzhenitsyn as seeing “western man as sleepwalking into the selfsame servitude that in the Soviet Union has been imposed by force.” Marxism may be almost gone, but secular materialism is in firm control in many places—including the former Soviet Union.

Thus Touchstone’s task is not easy: articulating timeless truths of Christ and his Church in a culture (and sadly, often in churches) crippled by a secularized worldview and its accompanying moral relativism. This is a hard labor that needs many voices. Indeed, the task of telling the truth is a calling larger than any one person or one journal. We, thank God, are only one of many and are glad that we are not alone.

If you have been reading Touchstone for a while, we hope you will agree that we are playing a part in speaking Truth against the darkness.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: May his memory be eternal!

A PS to Our Allies: Thank you for your very generous support this past year! We would not be publishing without it. The summer months are very "dry" months in terms of revenues. We very much need your contributions at this time. But above all, please remember us in your prayers.