Tonight the Associated Press is reporting the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel prize-winning novelist whose work helped discredit the government of Josef Stalin. At 89, the author was the oldest living Nobel laureate.
Solzhenitsyn’s literary and political vision was deeply informed by his Christian faith. Here is an excerpt from a 1994 Christianity Today article, in which author Peggy Jackson recounted Solzhenitsyn’s return from exile.
To discuss Solzhenitsyn’s Christianity is not to imply that he is going across the country preaching a religious message. He is not. His vision of Russia’s future would seek to reverse the destructive force of “freedom” understood within a nonreligious, relativist framework. Last fall he said, “Religion is undoubtedly necessary, but it must not be forcibly implanted and even must not be intensively propagandized; it is passed from man to man as an intimate gift.”
Read the rest of “A Russian Call to Repentance” from the August 15, 1994 issue of Christianity Today.
