Worldwide tributes for late Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who restored Solzhenitsyn's citizenship in 1990 and whose reforms helped end communism, said the writer had played a key role in undermining Stalin's totalitarian regime.

His works "changed the consciousness of millions of people", Mr Gorbachev said.

"He was one of the first to talk about the inhumane Stalinist regime and about the people who experienced it but were not broken."

"The world has lost one of the symbols of freedom," former French President Jacques Chirac said, as quoted by the AFP agency. "Russia has lost a great fighter for the truth, who worked to reconcile Russians with their past."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a statement Monday paid tribute to Russia's late Alexander Solzhenitsyn as "great writer and a moral witness."

In a telegram from the Russian government to his family, Solzhenitsyn was called "the country's conscience and an embodiment of internal freedom and dignity," and "a man, whose books and life served as moral guidelines for the nation."

Solzhenitsyn lacked the celebrity stature of American authors. And yet his tale, as well as the other works he produced - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - stand as a marker of history in written form.

As a writer, I stand in the shadow of that kind of courage. And as a reader, I am proud of having read his works, if for no other reason than to have made a connection to that moment in time, as a lesson and an appreciation of what it represented.

And if you have not not done so, set aside a year or two and read the three works cited in my opening paragraph before someone writes the Reader's Digest version.

RIP, Mr. Solzhenitsyn, and thank you for your contribution.

Solzhenitsyn was one such writer — a very rare one — to be able to let the reader enter the dimension or sphere of reality that the writer is presenting and propositioning, and eventually to be caught without any qualm into the truth that lies behind them, like being caught in an ever encroaching web of poignancy.

Nevertheless, his great courage and his literary achievement remain a tribute to the human spirit.  Even more, Solzhenitsyn's moral vision serves as a reminder that Christianity alone provides an adequate grounding for human dignity.

 

When asked once about the force of his writings, Solzhenitsyn explained:  "The secret is that when you've been pitched head first into hell you just write about it."  The world was changed because he did just that.

Now, we must say that the departure of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn marked the closing of an epoch in literature.