Children Quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
““Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.””
About This Quote
Source Book: The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1973
The author attributes the catastrophic outcomes of the Russian Revolution to a loss of spiritual and moral grounding, implying that forgetting divine principles leads to societal collapse.
In simple terms: Forgetting God caused the revolution’s ruin.
Recognize moral foundations in society.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- political analysis
- educational curricula
- public discourse
- community building
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- Can moral decline alone cause such upheaval?
- What other forces contributed to the revolution?
The claim oversimplifies complex political, economic, and social factors.