The Russian literary giant (and Nobel Prize Laureate) Alexander Solzhenitsyn passed away this week at the age of 89. Famed for being a dissident in the Soviet Union his star shone so brightly across the world that the authorities dared not harm him but forced him into western exile. An idealistic communist his criticisms of western capitalist decadence shocked many of his supporters, and on his eventual return to post-soviet Russia he once again regained the mantle of being the spokesperson for the russian national conscience.

Much has been written about him and many eulogies are available on the internet, so I will add no more. I shall simply quote from his seminal and epic work “The Gulag Archipelego” this short existential meditation on good and evil - a conundrum that he insists we all face - and a conundrum which many posts on this blog explores.

‘If my life had turned out differently, might I myself not have become just such an executioner? …

‘If only it was so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

But the line dividing good from evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?’

Owen Matthews has written an excellent article on Solzhenitsyn for todays Daily Mail, which is well worth a read (particularly for the uninitiated). As well as the philosophical quote from above he reminds us of a more political point made by Solzhenitsyn - and one that I think transcends nations, eras and ideologies and is applicable to all governments and peoples.

He saw himself as a prophet not just for Russia but for all mankind, and in his later years turned to denouncing the corruptions of Russia’s chaotic brand of freedom and the dangers of liberalism.

But for all his unfashionable conservatism, he believed adamantly in the value of human dignity - and that a state abdicated all moral authority to order society if it abused its citizens.