“The sole substitute for an experience we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.” — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share Image
“Then came the time for the evening visit to the toilet, for which, in all likelihood, you had waited, all atremble, all day. How… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share Image
“Was it only that explosion of atavism which is now evasively called "the cult of personality" that was so horrible? Or was it even more horrible that during those same years, in 1937 itself, we celebrated Pushkin's centennial? And that we shamelessly continued to stage those self-same Chekhov plays, even though the answers to them had already come in? Is… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share
“Evidently, evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share
“The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share Image
“It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and, in fact, it has been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share Image
“A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share Image
“Just as that puzzled savage who has picked up - a strange cast-up from the ocean? - something unearthed from the sands? - or an obscure object fallen down from the sky? - intricate in curves, it gleams first dully and then with a bright thrust of light. Just as he turns it this way and that, turns it over,… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share
“Shukhov enjoyed it. He liked people pointing at him — see that man? He's nearly done his time — but he didn't let himself get excited about it. Those who'd come to the end of their time during the war had all been kept in, "pending further orders" — till '46. So those originally sentenced to three years did five… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share
“One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved? There is, however, a certain peculiarity… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share
“But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter's forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share
