Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970. Because of his criticism of Stalinism, he spent almost a decade in a Soviet labor camp. It failed to break his spirit; indeed, the experience compelled him to write.
His first novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962),unforgettably captured the banality of evil under Soviet communism and earned him international attention as well as the plaudits of his countrymen. The Soviet security apparatus cracked down on Solzhenitsyn after the death of Nikita Khruschev in 1964. The first volume of his magnum opus, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, precipitated his arrest for treason and eventual exile from his beloved Russia.
Christian values permeate Solzhenitsyn’s writings. On Monday, 13 October at 6:30 p.m., The Christopher Dawson Society for the Study of Faith and Reason, will hold its second meeting of 2008-2009 by gathering to examine “A World Split Apart,” Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 address to Harvard University, and “Men Have Forgotten God,” an address he delivered in 1983 after winning the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
The meeting, which is open to the public, will be held at the AHI’s headquarters, 21 West Park Row in Clinton, New York. Refreshments will be served.
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