1978 June 8, five years after his expulsion from USSR, during the Carter presidency excerpts from "A World Split Apart" — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php
John E's comments are inserted into these excerpts, making this page a critical review.
Solzhenitsyn received 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for works published mainly in the West, including The Gulag Archipelago. He was a long-time critic of USSR and communism. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.
Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, the imminent nuclear physicist and hydrogen bomb designer, respected each other. Sakharov's protests for freedom for the residents of USSR caused the Kremlin to end Sakharov's contribution to weapons, and he was exiled to Gorky, a city closed to foreigners, from 1980 to 1988.
Three years ago in the United States I said certain things that were rejected and appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I said. John E's comment: Not that academia changes very quickly, just that Solzhenitsyn came across professors here and there who had a chance to think about Solzhenitsyn's comments and agreed.
Western society expanded [as the West claimed colonies] in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden the twentieth century brought the clear realization of this society's fragility. We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious [witness France and Algeria] (and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests). Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness. (being overly obedient and submissive) [Witness Pres. Obama's apologies before foreign leaders for the U.S.]
But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. [A shepherd in Jordan or a goat herder in a tribe of Africa probably doesn't want to have all the Western opportunities. Many of the philanthropic organizations contributing to Africa mandate the adoption of liberal Western policies as condition of the contributions. Abortion and h___ make their way into conservative African culture.]
[Especially consider the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, which brought a type of progress, but which progressively corrodes, as Modernism has been supplanted by Post Modernism.] The prevailing Western view of the world was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all...The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs...in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.
...boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.
[The purges in Communism that have murdered tens of millions were done on these bases: life is transient; life is followed by annihilation, no soul succeeds earthly life; it matters little what any one person accomplishes since the mass of humanity matters more than the individual; political expediency sometimes requires the clearing away of entire groups of older people, some of whom are set in antiquated thinking and impede progress; it doesn't matter that groups die, everyone is going to die.]
The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.
The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.
There is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness...On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment.
[Thirteen years after Solzhenitsyn's address, USSR broke apart. Then in the 2010s, Putin, former KGB, rises to power and seeks to patch together a successor to USSR. He uses the customary strategies of USSR: assassinate, promise, and invade.]
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