Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a titan in Russian literature and politics of the 20th century. As a child, I read his “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and later smuggled “The Gulag Archipelago” and “The Cancer Ward”, which were illegal in the USSR and available as the underground Samizdat hand-typed copies only. True, Solzhenitsyn’s life was full of contradictions. He was a harsh critic of the West, of liberal democracy, and of America, which gave him shelter and protection for 18 difficult years of exile. Solzhenitsyn has embraced today’s …
