Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the reclusive icon of the Russian intelligentsia and chronicler of communist repression, died Sunday. He was 89.
His son, Stephan Solzhenitsyn, told the Associated Press that his father died of heart failure in Moscow.
The soulful writer and spiritual father of Russia’s nationalist patriotic movement lived to be reunited with his beloved homeland after two decades of exile – only to be as distressed by communism’s damage to the Russian character as he was by his earlier forced estrangement from the land and people he loved.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn returned from his Vermont refuge to a dramatically changed Russia in 1994 but deemed it a moral ruin after a monthslong odyssey to become re-acquainted with the country that had denounced him as a traitor, stripped him of citizenship and expelled him in 1974.
Hailed as Russia’s greatest living writer, the author of more than two dozen books – in addition to commentaries, poems, plays and film scripts – won back his citizenship and the respect of his fellow Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although his books were best-sellers in the West, only “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published first in his homeland.
Reading the Gulag Archipelago in college was a life-changing event. May he rest in peace.
Anglicanum
A true giant of the last century and a heroic figure in the fight against tyranny. May his memory be eternal!
ICXC NIKA
[url=http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/]John[/url]
Sorry to hear of his passing.
His were a couple of my great “reads” in high school english lit class. Haven’t forgotten them.
Echo the thoughts of 1 and 2.
RGEaton
There is a nice piece by Chuck Colson in the current Christianity Today about Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard address put into perspective. Written before his death, it is a very fine tribute.