Alexander Solzhenitsyn passed away last summer, 30 years after a controversial graduation speech at Harvard in June of 1978. Solzhenitsyn’s long 90 year life was a fascinating journey taking many turns. Born in the area of southern Russia known as the Caucasus, Solzhenitsyn was trained early as a mathematician, began a career as a writer, and served in the Red Army during World War II. In 1945 he was arrested by the Communist government based on negative comments about Stalin in intercepted personal letters he had written. He served eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, harsh experiences that shaped the context for his later novels, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He eventually settled in the United States until returning to Russia in 1994 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

 

Solzhenitsyn’s graduation speech at Harvard in 1978 elicited a clamorous response. Why? First, the speech was not the typical graduation speech that his audience may have been expecting: Solzhenitsyn had never even attended such a graduation ceremony before and was unaware of any anticipated norms and niceties. Second, it was a highly serious speech, perhaps even more complex than his Harvard hearers were prepared to absorb on that celebratory day. Third, in addition to being philosophical and sociological the speech had religious overtones.

 

In short, Solzhenitsyn criticized what he perceived to be a decline in the moral and civic life of American culture, a descent into hedonistic self-indulgence and resort to legal processes rather than moral discourse in addressing social problems. Sound familiar? Was Solzhenitsyn simply a jaded foreigner unable to discern the nuances of American cultural life? Or was he perhaps a prophet? In any case, like many prophets down through history his message was not appreciated – and presumably not absorbed - by many of his hearers.

 

I recommend reading Solzhenitsyn’s speech entitled “A World Split Apart”: