Steven Douglas Maloney

Posts Tagged ‘Gulag Archipelago’

While many of the great writers and thinkers of the middle twentieth-century defended the Soviet Union, or gazed upon it with hope, one of the most important figures who effectively killed all of that type of talking once and for all was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn’s stories, particularly The Gulag Archipelago, gave Western audiences a clear look behind the so-called “iron curtain,” ending any speculation that USSR was a regime that any reasonable person could possibly endorse. He was, as Christohper Hitchens once said of George Orwell, a poweful writer because he “had the courage to tell the truth.” Solzhenitsyn passed away over the weekend. I have on occassion explained to classes of mine who have never heard of him who he was and why I think it i important that we rememebr him. Solzhenitsyn is a symbol of the importance of telling the truth in dark times, and in the power of language in its ability to reach people. I hope one day to have a way to wedge him into my teaching for years in the future. Many criticize the idea of their being a literary canon and worry about its flaws – but I hope that in on hundred years there is such thing as a literary canon – and I hope very much that Denisov, The First Circle, and Gulag are in that canon, still being read by future generations of young Americans.

Rest in Peace