Teller of Truth

4 August 2008



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Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89

The secret to great literature is to tell the truth. Few people have the personal bravery to put down on paper just what is what. The literary world is poorer this morning because of the death of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. He was one of those rare humans who was prepared to tell the truth as he saw it no matter what the price.

A decorated artillery officer and hero of the Great Patriotic War (as the Russians call World War II), Mr. Solzhenitsyn spent 8 years in a prison camp for criticizing Stalin in a letter. Thanks to Khrushchev’s liberalizations, he was allowed to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, an autobiography of sorts that made him a celebrity around the world. When Khrushchev fell from power, the KGB came after Mr. Solzhenitsyn with a vengeance.

In 1970, the Swedish Academy selected him as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He declined to attend the ceremony for fear that he would not be permitted to return to the Soviet Union. No one had a greater love for his country that this man who had suffered so much for telling the truth.

That is not to say that one could agree with some of his more outrageous statements. Discussing the bombing of Serbia in the 1990s, he said, “there is no difference whatsoever between NATO and Hitler.” That is, of course, complete bollocks. Nevertheless, Mr. Solzhenitsyn believed it wholeheartedly, and there is a great difference between being wrong and being a liar.

As he said at Harvard in 1978, “Harvard's motto is ‘Veritas.’ Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.”

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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