If you have not read some of the works of Solzhenitsyn you should.
Some of you have, some of you will and some will not.
For all, this was the most heroic of men. He wrote without ulterior motive...he never thought any of his early works would ever reach print. He wrote to document history and to object to inhumanity.
We have talked recently here about the willingness to speak up in protest, and how much that is a part of who and what we are as Americans. Solzhenitsyn did the same but in a Communist Soviet Union! He is credited with the start of the downfall of that huge austere nation.
Just a bit of his "Gulag Archipelago, 1973."
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the `weakness of indoctrinational work,' that they are growing up `indifferent.' Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.
"It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!"
_ "The Gulag Archipelago"
The death of a human hero is a sad happening...but his words will live forever.
Some of you have, some of you will and some will not.
For all, this was the most heroic of men. He wrote without ulterior motive...he never thought any of his early works would ever reach print. He wrote to document history and to object to inhumanity.
We have talked recently here about the willingness to speak up in protest, and how much that is a part of who and what we are as Americans. Solzhenitsyn did the same but in a Communist Soviet Union! He is credited with the start of the downfall of that huge austere nation.
Just a bit of his "Gulag Archipelago, 1973."
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the `weakness of indoctrinational work,' that they are growing up `indifferent.' Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.
"It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!"
_ "The Gulag Archipelago"
The death of a human hero is a sad happening...but his words will live forever.
All too sad of many past heros.... Thank you, Roy, for bringing him to the light (for me). And may he rest in peace.
