Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, and Six Later Reflections

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard is an early reaction to a devastatingly significant, intellectually shocking commencement address by the Russian nationalist Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Harvard University in 1978, called "A World Split Apart." Solzhenitsyn openly condemned western materialism and secularism. Suffice to say that the western intelligencia (as full of liberals - including the neo-con brand of liberals - as it remains today) was deeply dissappointed that Solzhenitsyn seemed less than appreciative of liberal America than they had expected. This is a terribly significant book. When it was written the neo-cons were just coming into their flowering - but they were not recognized then as they have become today (a look at their names Richard Pipes, Sidney Hook, Michael Novack reads like the architects of the Iraq war). Ronald Berman balances them with overt liberals like Arthur Schlessinger. Sometimes there is barely concealed rage as in the essay by Richard Pipes in which he manages to condemn Solzhenitsyn, the Russian people, and the Russian Orthodox Church. "In places, Solzhenitsyn uses virtually the same language as his nineteenth-century forerunners. This fact emphasizes the remarkable continuity of Russian intellectual history, especially its conservative strain, to which Solzhenitsyn indubitably belongs. Each generation of Russians seems to discover afresh the same answers, partly because of the hold on their imagination of Orthodox Christianity.." In this book, in the condemnation of Solzhenitsyn, you can read the germinating seeds of the modern American belief in progress which enslaves the American people to the worst angels of their nature - the belief that they know what is wrong with the world and can fix it, and have the right to fix it. While occasionally shallow, this book is of great historical, intellectual significance - not because it documents the address of Solzhenitsyn, but because it documents the reaction of the people who would come to dominate political discourse in 21st century. Solzhenitsyn passed away this week. He was a great man. May he rest in peace.