Posted 8:09 AM by Gene

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died. We are not familiar with his works, only his legacy, which speaks for itself for all time: the voice of Russia, and the voice of Conscience; the voice that exposed the Gulag, the voice that exposed the depthless evil of Soviet Communism. He was the bedrock to the cause of the dissidents and by his example set up John Paul II's courageous fight against the Communists in Poland. Back in 1978, in the thing that resonates with us, he delivered a commencement address at Harvard in which he prophetically spoke (in several senses) of the softness of the West against the Soviet menace. The hacks focused (as little minds will) on what he said about rock music and called him a reactionary old fogy and all that jazz, which showed their excellence of character; but we paid the price the following year for our mental softness, and again twenty-three years later, and because we didn't listen to such a voice of authority. In his last years he became almost a joke, but that was because he won his fight against Soviet evil, a fight he won through the strength of his pen, and his guts, and if a low-grade criminal malice has replaced it we at least know Belly Kisser is no Stalin, whatever his boasts. Heck even he mourned him. Only Solzhenitsyn's undying example, and the memories of the unspeakable privations of his people, can keep Russia from backtracking into evil.

We see The Paper of Re-CORD's Web site has give him a tiny little box of his own on the home page, which means, needless to say, he did a lot of good.