“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 120

Russian writer 1918–2008

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