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I read the Gulag Archipelago over several days in early 1976 while stationed as
an enlisted man at Edwards AFB. The whole experience was riveting, I read
well into the night and knew for a fact that communism of any form was
dead at this point. No matter how many tanks or bombers or missiles or
parades or Ivy League professors they had on their side, the jig was up. It
was something that was foreshadowed to me as a young man growing up in
the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California upon hearing of communism;
that it couldn’t stand, that eventually evil would be overcome by goodness. Probably
two men had the most to do with its collapse, of course Alex S. and his books
recalling his experiences, but then again you have to credit Bill Buckley for
pressing the issue at home and influencing people such as Ronald Reagan. It is
fitting, that after fighting the good fight on towards victory, that both men should
gain their eternal rest in the same year.