‘Men Have Forgotten God’: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 Templeton Address

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You would think it’s bad form to have a virulent anti-Semite as one of the public figures of conservatism and anti-communism, but apparently not.
 
Solzhenitsyn, like Biblical Job, spoke many things exploring his experience, his sufferings and sorrows.
As Marie-Aude Saint Michel puts it, in one of her comments:
  • "According to a French saying “one should not throw the baby away with the water of the bath”, in other words, it may be wise to distinguish elements in a man’s life. Solzhenitsyn was not a saint, he made huge moral mistakes, including not defending his fellow zek Vladimir Bukovsky in times of trouble, he did say something very much wrong in regards to Ukraine, but he was a giant of faith, he was a tool of God I believe and faced the Western world with honesty and lucidity. He gave crucial warnings and remains in all eternity a defender of inner freedom and advocate of the power of faith in the various circles of inferno. I love Ukraine dearly and shed tears with the Ukrainian people, the truth is eternal and one should remember it once in a while. Having said that, Slava Ukraïni and all brave Russians who protest daily one by one. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said minutes before being executed on 9 April 1945: “victory is certain”, for God has won already. Christmas is a reminder of it though the coming of our Savior. ✨🙏
 
I’ve tried reading A Day In the Life if Ivan Denisovich, but found it long in detail and short on philosophy (ie how does one thrive in a gulag environment).
I want to read Gulag Archipelago next.
 
I’m going to put this into my reading list.

I read his famous Harvard Commencement Address decades (1978) ago, and was very impressed. This looks similar, with a more theological focus.

The self-destruction of the west he prophesied at Harvard has both been fulfilled, and not fulfilled. We have somehow continued to prosper materially, but morally I think we are even worse than he foresaw. Neither he nor anyone else foresaw that by 2018 marriage would be almost extinct as a “lifelong” commitmen, we’d have succumbed to SSM, endless “victimhood” under the SJW banners, the destruction of thought and free speech in many parts of the campuses, and looming Islamic power and refugee crises. Most of all, we just seem to be lost and unhappy, yet, on the surface, living quite well.

Perhaps I can sum it up as: in 1978 and 1983 Solzhenitsen saw that “God” had been forgotten in the west, but still the shadow of our religion remained. Now we can see what we’d replace it with.

So, I intend to go back to the Harvard address, and also this, to see how it can explain the present and what it may say about the future. I’ve also got his major books on my reading list.

Jordan Peterson, a great commentator on freedom of speech on the campuses, wrote the forward to the new edition of The Gulag Archipelago.

 
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Men have forgotten God indeed. We are probably living in the devil’s century.
 
Gulag Archipelago its a long journey into the historical narrative.
For readers, many moments in the works of Solzhenitsyn may be interesting.
I was interested to find out how Ukrainian nationalists and Chechens, Caucasians opposed the rule of thieves in prison camps.
Solzhenitsyn impressively describes how German exiles for example became a blessing for Siberia and Kazakhstan thanks to organization and hard work.
 
It is sometimes useful for our well-fed generation to read through what deprivation imprisoned people suffered because of their political and religious convictions.
The topic of protesting of freedom thinking people against an authoritarian and totalitarian machine is relevant for many societies today.
 
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Solzhenitsyn impressively describes not only the inconsistency and vulnerability of the totalitarian communist system, but also the madness of state atheism.
 
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Hardly. He was a proponent of all kinds of anti-Semitic and ahistorical notions about the Bolsheviks and the USSR. He basically reduced the Russian Revolution to some kind of Jewish coup - he explicitly stated that he believes there were no Jews on the front line during the Civil War and Great Patriotic War, and he has also made other claims about the Bolsheviks being predominantly Jewish. These claims have been countered by actual historians.
 
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Solzhenitsyn can compete with Marx in convincing argumentation. 😊
In the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn reveals the horrors of the system as a boxer mercilessly beating his rival. He simply knocks out the system with the power of a pen.
Especially the early period of the communist system.
 
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