Solzynitsin

In 1978, the audience in Cambridge Massachusetts, at Harvard University's commencement speech, was being addressed by an esteemed writer and thinker named Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Coming from Communist Russia, many people were expecting a speech praising Western values, ideals, and accomplishments. However, what Sol came to say, was anything but a praise of Western Civilization. He proceeded to warn Westerners about the demise of our society that stemmed from our diluted ideals and virtues that we have come to rely on so greatly. In his speech entitled "A World Split Apart," Alexander Solzhenitsyn relates many downfalls of the "common society" to many topics we are discussing this semester in the Development of Western Civilization.

One of the topics that had particular relevance to Solzhenitsyn's speech was the idea of existentialism. Existentialist's were advocates of free will and said that we were the product of our choices. We are responsible for our individual choices, and the product of those choices, the existentialist's preached, makes up the complete human person. Soren Kierkegaard, a very influential existentialist also has relevance to Solzhenitsyn's speech. The individual is subject to an enormous burden of responsibility, for upon his or her existential choices hangs his or her eternal salvation or damnation. "Kierkegaard's central problem was how to become a Christian in Christendom. The task was most difficult for the well-educated, since prevailing educational and cultural institutions tended to produce stereotyped members of "the crowd" rather than to allow individuals to discover their own unique identities" (www.plato.stanford.edu). Sol talks about this a great deal in his speech as he is a huge advocate for individual advancement versus the "crowd" mentality. In Eastern Europe, mostly in Communist Russia, social identities were fluid, meaning everyone was considered the same, but in the West there is a huge opportunity for advancement that we all take for granted.

Sol touches on the topic of courage quite early in his speech. "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today" (A World Split Apart, pg. 2). In the twentieth century, more than any other period in history, the realization that evil was present became clear. The Holocaust and Stalinist Russia made people in Eastern Europe who experienced them hardened to the harsh realities that were commonplace in their lives. Only courage and hope would allow the human person to reach its full potential. With the absence of courage, one is forced to be content with struggle and hardship. Bonhoeffer could be said to embody the ideal of courage as well. After all, in a time of complete chaos and absurdity, he worked to save Jews from persecution and eventually was killed by Hitler for his plans. Akhamatova's Requiem also plays on the ideal of courage. She was hated by Stalin and forced to write flattering poetry about him to humiliate her. He arrested her son and sent him to a gulag, or Russian prison, yet she never lost her faith and stayed courageous until the bitter end.

Sol also says that that "every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and in such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness" (A World Split Apart, pg. 3). However, with a background and upbringing much different than many Americans his age, Sol sees through the guise that materials lead to happiness. He goes on to say that even though we in the West have all these great capabilities and capacities to achieve, we still strive and want more. Hastiness and superficiality are two important themes that lead to the demise of western society. We have been given freedoms that many Europeans only dream about, yet we still want more and this constant competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not allow us to be fully "spiritually free." Sol also touches on the point of legalism in western society. He says that though the social conditions of the Western world are far superior to those in the East, there still remains a great deal of crime and terrorism. "It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world the way to successful economic developmentÐ'...however many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own societyÐ'...and this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current." (A World Split Apart, pg. 7). We can see that Sol is a sharp critic of socialism and agrees with Igor Shafarevich, a Russian mathematician that socialism leads to the total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. He obviously disagrees with Marxist theology and is a supporter of capitalism yet firmly refutes that our society is one to be sought after, as Easterners have "achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive" (A World Split Apart, pg. 7). Hardships and personal anguish within