A recently released collection of essays from the University of Notre Dame Press on the work and thought of Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul and the West, makes this point, among others, as it aims to provide a fuller view of the man while in the process making the case for why not just his work, but indeed his counterintuitively Russian worldview, may be exactly what the West needs to survive.

Perhaps this painful situation is necessary to recover a higher order. It is an unpopular opinion held by Solzhenitsyn. It is, to the point of cliché, a profoundly “Russian” idea. As Joseph Pearce notes in his contribution to the collection, quoting an interview he conducted with Solzhenitsyn:

In the West there is a widespread feeling that this is masochism, that if we highly value suffering this is masochism. On the contrary, it is a significant bravery when we respect suffering and understand what burdens it places on our soul.

Jeremy Kee reviews a new collection of essays on Solzhenitsyn for the Kirk Center.