Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn B. 1918 – D. 2008
“Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, and short story writer. Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and Communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag labor camp system.” – Wikipedia
Solzhenitsyn Quotes:
“It’s a universal law– intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. ‘One word of truth outweighs the world.’” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Our envy of others devours us most of all.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In memory of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by Pastor John Piper:
“Yesterday Alexander Solzhenitsyn died at the age of 89. I pause here on my vacation in the woods of Wisconsin to say, Thank you, heavenly Father, for the inspiration of this man’s life.
No one did more than Solzhenitsyn to expose the horrors of the failed communist experiment in Russia. Hitler’s purge would pale, if such things could pale, when compared to ten times the carnage in Stalin’s gulags.
Solzhenitsyn inspired me because of the suffering he endured and the effect it had on him. Here is the quote that I have not forgotten. It moves me deeply to this day. After his imprisonment in the Russian gulag of Joseph Stalin’s “corrective labor camps” Solzhenitsyn wrote:
“It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts…. That is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: “Bless you, prison!” I…have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!” (The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, Vol. 2, 615-617)”
For the complete message go to https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/thank-you-lord-for-solzhenitsyn
11/12/2018, PRESIDENT PUTIN UNVEILS SOLZHENITSYN MONUMENT
At a ceremony today on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Street in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new monument of Solzhenitsyn. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center — PRESIDENT PUTIN UNVEILS SOLZHENITSYN MONUMENT
The Religion That Started in a Hat 