Solzhenitsyn: Still Telling the Truth
He can be ignored, for a while, but never silenced.

By NR’s editors, November 21, 1994, issue of National Review
May 26-28, 2001

On May 27, 1994, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after two decades of exile. Later that year, NR's editors reflected on the modern-day Isaiah.

leksandr Solzhenitsyn will be remembered as one of the prophetic voices of the twentieth century. Even if the world is covered over with concrete, he memorably said, echoing Ilya Ehrenburg, a blade of grass will grow through a crack. The blade of grass did grow, into a revolution of freedom. Yet last week Solzhenitsyn felt he had to address the Russian parliament. His blade of grass had become a weedy tangle. He was greeted with boredom by the parliamentarians, and largely ignored by the world press.

As usual, however, Solzhenitsyn was worth hearing. "We have moved out of Communism in the most distorted, most absurd, most painful way. What kind of state system do we have today? It's not democracy. Let us admit that it is oligarchy…the power of a restricted group of individuals."

When the old Soviet regime was forced by Solzhenitsyn's eminence to send him into exile, he — first in Paris and then throughout the civilized world — destroyed what was left of the moral authority of Communism. Gulag Archipelago was a literary and moral masterpiece. He and his wife had memorized the names of the prisoners, zeks, in Soviet prison camps, refusing to let them remain anonymous. Solzhenitsyn spoke with overwhelming moral authority. He was like Walt Whitman's man who :suffered" and was "there," like Elie Wiesel on Hitler's death camps.

Today he remains an Isaiah. His testimony about Russian oligarchic corruption is searing, powerful. He can be ignored, for a while, but never silenced.