But, as he became more widely known as a great symbol of resistance to communism, he became the recipient of unusual treatment handed out by Soviet leaders. The Kremlin's tyrants customarily responded to any harsh criticism by eliminating its purveyors. Not so with Solzhenitsyn. In 1970, after the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize for literature, the Kremlin's bosses promptly and resoundingly denounced both the Swedes and Solzhenitsyn. The man newly designated as an "enemy of the Soviet state" then declined to go to Sweden to accept the award. 

 

During the many decades of Soviet control over Russia, Kremlin authorities had always kept careful watch over any foreigner they allowed into their country and they refused to permit critics to leave. But Solzhenitsyn's refusal to go to Sweden had nothing to do with an inability to leave Russia; he announced that he feared not being able to return. Soon he was found cooperating with Western newsmen as he spelled out the reality of life in a Soviet prison, a development that could have easily been blocked at any time by either banning the Western newsmen or imprisoning the increasingly famous author. 

 

In 1972, the New York Times — a great promoter of détente with the Moscow's criminal regime — published Solzhenitsyn's yet undelivered Nobel Prize acceptance speech that was somehow smuggled to the West. And the supposed huge thorn in the flesh of the Soviet leaders continued to speak out against the Red regime when other prominent antagonists were silenced in a heart beat. Then came the publication of the first of three volumes (1973-1976) entitled The Gulag Archipelago.   

 

The world was told that a manuscript for this soon-to-be-famous work had been possessed by a woman in Leningrad. Arrested, abused, and grilled for 120 hours without sleep, she finally told her detainers where it could be found and then went home and hanged herself. But Solzhenitsyn had already smuggled another copy to the West and he gave the go-ahead for its publication. We wondered then, and wonder still, why this woman was brutalized when the author of the book was now remaining virtually untouched. 

 

A few weeks after Gulag had been published in the Russian language and copies were "smuggled" back into the country, Solzhenitsyn was arrested. His "punishment" for the terrible slurs he had written about the USSR was absolutely unique. He was stripped of his Soviet citizenship, put on a commercial airliner, and sent to Germany where he stayed for a week and then moved to Switzerland. A few short weeks later, his wife and children were sent on another commercial jet to join him. Some punishment! Yet, within three months of the amazing treatment accorded Solzhenitsyn, Gavriel Superfin, a former researcher for the famous author who was also a minor critic of the Kremlin, was sentenced to five years in a labor camp. At least a few eyebrows should have been raised when the thugs who had contributed to Soviet murders of 60 million people treated Solzhenitsyn with kid gloves.

 

In America, excerpts from The Gulag Archipelago appeared first in the New York Times, the newspaper that had for so many years spent great effort providing legitimacy for the very government Solzhenitsyn was criticizing. Then publication followed in the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Time, Newsweek and numerous other long-time pro-détente propagandists who claimed that Russia was "mellowing." While all this was occurring, Solzhenitsyn released a letter he had written to Kremlin leaders that stated: "Russia is authoritarian. Let it remain so, and let us no longer try to change that."   

 

In December 1974, Solzhenitsyn finally went to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize. More publicity for the exiled Russian followed. In mid-1975, he traveled to the United States at the invitation of the AFL-CIO, America's left-leaning labor titan, delivered speeches arranged by its leaders, and saw texts of his addresses reprinted and distributed widely by the labor bosses. Anti-communists in America became ever more suspicious of the man when he was selected in 1978 to deliver the commencement speech at Harvard University. No one could recall any opponent of communism ever being so honored at Harvard.   

 

Newspapers from coast to coast published the Harvard address. In it, the veteran of the Gulags focused on "the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming stronger and stronger." He said that the West has lost its "will power" and was in a state of "spiritual exhaustion." Its people, he insisted, suffered from "a loss of courage." His words weren't addressed to America's leaders but to ordinary patriotic Americans — as if they were complicit in carrying out the defeatist policies of the U.S. government. In contrast, he touted the people in communist controlled lands for becoming "firmer and stronger." The speech drew a surprisingly sharp rebuke from Mrs. Rosalyn Carter, who rarely said anything publicly.

 

In 1976, the State Department granted the famous author a permanent visa to live in the United States. Claiming that he left Switzerland because of being spied upon by Soviet secret police, Solzhenitsyn purchased a home in one of the prettiest parts of Vermont for $100,000 (a princely sum at the time) and then spent $250,000 renovating the house and attending to the property. He rarely ventured away from home although he continued to receive adulation from what he believed were "spiritually exhausted" Americans.  

 

After spending 18 years in the United States, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994. Claiming that he was impressed with Boris Yeltsin's short-lived leadership, he more recently spoke highly of the "restoration" he saw in the Russia under the leadership of former KGB chieftain Vladimir Putin.

 

What then can be concluded of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn? Despite conflicting statements, it would be difficult to avoid classifying him as an enemy of Soviet barbarism and, equally, an opponent of America's years of its fawning relationship with the Kremlin. Of his criticism of America, it seems likely that he was used by some to spread despair and defeatism among the ordinary people, which is probably the reason for the wide publicity it was given. Whatever the case, there remains in America a bedrock of resistance to totalitarianism and a willingness to stand up to the forces of big government and internationalism. Despair and defeatism are un-American attitudes.                

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