A Great Russian Author Passes Away..

Just yesterday the great Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn died. Alexander was the son of a well known composer/pianist. His writing was significant enough to earn him a Nobel Prize in Literature (1970) and deportation from Russia (1974). He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and was a prisoner in the the Gulag and also spent time in the Lubyanka prison and various labor camps. His life is a warning about the perils of statism. Later in life, he lived in the U.S.A. for a number of years, and gave a number of well-known lectures. He spoke of the dangers of communism, but was also a very outspoken critic of Western popular culture. In his view "the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits ... by TV stupor and by intolerable music".

Solzhenitsyn's key works include One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The Gulag Archipelago.