I remember being eleven-years-old when the news broke that the Russians had expelled a dissident writer from their country. I didn't understand the importance of this man at the time, but I later recognized his greatness -- and the importance of his shedding light on the evil of Communism.

Today that man, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, has departed this earthly life.

The Soviet dissident writer and Nobel literature prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died aged 89, according to the Interfax news agency.

The agency said he died of a stroke, although his son Stepan Solzhenitsyn said his father died of heart failure. The author had suffered from ill heath, including high blood pressure, in recent years.

Solzhenitsyn served with the Red Army in the Second World War but became one of the most prominent dissidents of the Soviet era, enduring labour camps, cancer and persecution under the Soviet regime.

His experience of the network of labour camps was vividly described in his work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

His key works, including "The First Circle" and "Cancer Ward" brought him world admiration and the 1970 Nobel Literature prize.

He was stripped of his citizenship and sent into exile in 1974 after the publication of "The Gulag Archipelago", his monumental history of the Soviet police state. Solzhenitsyn then moved to the United States, returning to post-Soviet Russia as a hero in 1994.

His diagnosis for the root cause of the evil that afflicted his homeland was clear and unapologetic.

"If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible that 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 had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'"

My words are not sufficient to praise one whose words and message were so important to the eventual downfall of communism, and whose suffering for speaking out against evil was a source of inspiration to millions. Let it suffice to say that he was among the giants of the twentieth century.

May Alexander Solzhenitsyn find himself this night in the arms of the Savior who he served faithfully -- and may his loved ones be comforted with the knowledge that this is so.

Posted by: Greg at 12:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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