Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

“The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian individual who was a writer and poet. Solzhenitsyn would write freely about what he believed and would send his correspondence to friends. Up until the point when the Soviets took power and opened on of his letters. The clear intrusion of privacy did not register in the minds of the Soviets as it was known that Aleksandr was a writer. Like any group think ideology, the Soviet Communists decided that in order to prevent wrong think or evil ideologies from flourishing (evil as in everything that they, the Soviets, themselves did not believe in), they needed to invade the Aleksandr’s privacy and bring him to social justice.

 

“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

After having his letter stolen and taken into the Soviet court, Aleksandr was charged with writing against the Communist government. He was sentenced to confinement and taken to multiple locations. It was there that he found out what the reality of Communist was. He made it his mission to find out the most he could from the people’s own mouths concerning the government. He found out at the reality was worse than he thought. People were silenced, tortured, used, abused, hated, envied, destroyed, all for the sake of unlimited power. Neighbor hated neighbor and soldiers used their power to get what they wanted.

 

“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually also recognize the voice of conscience.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

As he continued to live under the terrible management of the government, Aleksandr learned to understand those compatriots who had suffered the same fate. They all specified how they were lied to and how they never understood why. Aleksandr understood that the government was using lies as the only method of suppressing the truth. To the outside world, Russia was seen as a strong force, but inside the country, people were suffering. Many people were sent to labor camps where they worked for no pay and only a stingy meal. All was not well in the Soviet Union.

 

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many in the West it is still a living lion.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Russians living in the Soviet Union knew what their truth was. They knew that it was a cannibal like led government that survived by eating its own citizens. Russians knew that in their day to day lives. Only the West was unaware of the reality of the roaring Bear. It is many years later and yet we see the influence that such a dangerous ideology leads many astray. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was able to speak the truth and was able to write the reality he lived in. For that, the West, should be greatful for the truth expressed by Solzhenitsyn.