Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died at 89, Russian media say.
The author of One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and the Gulag Archipelago, who returned to Russia in 1994, reportedly died of a stroke.

from the BBC

His Gulag Archipelago is a book to which I have returned several times since I first read it.  Most notably, I have found it an indispensable guide to, well, many things in church life.

 

Comments

[Fr Matt]

A great loss, from a man who knew true courage.

"A Decline in Courage [. . .]
may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice." (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html)