Rhetorical Craft, Enduring Relevance: The Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In a chapter from his 1973 Autobiographical Reflections entitled “Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!” Eric Voegelin pointed out how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn invoked Francis Bacon’s concept of the “idols of the marketplace,” in which language loses contact with reality. In his 1966 novel Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn was applying that idea to the lies perpetuated by the Communist regime in the Soviet Union. Voegelin suggested that Solzhenitsyn’s “awareness of the problem, as well as his competence as a philosopher in his reference to Bacon, is certainly a model that would, if followed, fundamentally change the intellectual climate of our colleges and universities.” Voegelin’s qualifier, “if followed,” spurs us to consider the sad fact that Solzhenitsyn’s insights have not been followed, even as the intervening decades have continued to prove Solzhenitsyn a true prophet.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn has selected and edited a new collection of his father’s speeches that capture Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic vision, philosophical reflections, and rhetorical prowess. Readers of We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn will find his most famous speeches – the Nobel Lecture, the Harvard Address, and the Templeton Lecture – together with seven others that are lesser-known. The collection offers several features that make it an excellent resource for Solzhenitsyn studies in English: lucid translations, background about each speech, a timeline of Solzhenitsyn’s life, notes describing the historical events Solzhenitsyn refers to, suggestions for further reading, and an index of key topics in all the speeches.

The introductory piece by Ignat Solzhenitsyn, “Not Everything Can Be Named,” provides an especially helpful perspective: he notes that Solzhenitsyn’s main work during the period of these speeches, 1972 to 1997, was writing the series of novels about the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel. The invitations to give these speeches offered a “refreshing, if brief, change of pace” while immersed in his longer writing projects (xvii).

The experience of reading the ten speeches in this compact volume allows for concentrated reflection on several facets of Solzhenitsyn’s work that prove his continuing relevance, including his prophetic critiques of the West, his reflections on our neglected souls, and his guidance toward a better world.

Solzhenitsyn’s Prophetic Critique

In several of these speeches, Solzhenitsyn points out how Dostoevsky, writing in the 19th century, accurately predicted the horrors of the 20th century in Russia. Dostoevsky saw where the ideas fashionable among his generation would eventually lead. As Solzhenitsyn notes in the 1976 speech “If One Doesn’t Wish to Be Blind,” Dostoevsky (in his novel Demons) correctly predicted that socialism would cost Russia 100 million victims (39). In the 1993 speech “We Have Ceased to See the Purpose,” Solzhenitsyn  points out that “only Dostoevsky . . . foresaw the coming of totalitarianism” (123).

Just as Solzhenitsyn acknowledges the prophetic insight of Dostoevsky, readers will realize that in the era these speeches were written, Solzhenitsyn himself spoke forth on dangers that would become even more pronounced after his death in 2008. These include the influence of the mass media and the legalistic orientation of the West, both of which cripple the human soul.

In 1978’s Harvard Address, Solzhenitsyn takes aim at the press, which operates on the slogan that “Everyone is entitled to know everything.” That, he says, “is a false slogan of a false age; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk . . . a person who labors diligently and leads a meaningful life has no need at all for this excessive and burdening flow of information” (71).

The concern with media oversaturation echoes what Solzhenitsyn had observed in the 1972 Nobel Lecture: “Onrushing waves of events bear down upon us, and half the world learns in one minute of what is splashed ashore. But the scales to measure these events and to evaluate them according to the laws of the parts of the world unfamiliar to us are not, nor can they be, carried to us through the ether or on sheets of newsprint” (11). We have experienced this problem even more acutely with the rise of the internet, as we are overwhelmed by our social media feeds that include serious news of war atrocities and environmental disasters alongside gossip about friends, sports, and celebrities – with no perspective given. With newspapers, at least, the size of the headline might indicate significance and draw your attention, but who reads newspapers anymore? In our online social media feeds, we just scroll down from one item to the next. When we are exposed to so many things that are trivial, we lose sight of what is most important.

The media claims to give us all the news, and yet there are stunning omissions or even cover-ups. I am haunted by one example Solzhenitsyn gives in “If One Doesn’t Wish to be Blind,” addressing a British audience in 1976. He recalls how, after World War Two, the U.S. and United Kingdom forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union over a million Soviet citizens in the British Isles and Europe, who did not want to live under the Soviet regime. Never one to flatter his Western audiences, Solzhenitsyn criticizes the West for their lack of moral courage in caving in to the Soviet Union, which cost all those people their freedom and even their lives. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn mentions in “We Have Ceased to See the Purpose” that the Western press covered up this shameful event for twenty-five years (112). The endnotes to this volume direct readers to more sources about this tragic history.

Another critique of the West that Solzhenitsyn expresses in several of these speeches is our legalistic orientation. While it is undeniably a blessing for nations to have good laws, we have developed a culture around them where the question is more, “What can I get away with?” rather than “What is my duty to others?” Solzhenitsyn warned his audience of the dangers of mere legalism in the Harvard Address: “A society grounded in law but never reaching any higher takes but poor advantage of the full range of human potential. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. When the entire tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, there materializes an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that deadens man’s noblest impulses” (68). After two decades of living in the West, Solzhenitsyn maintained it was still a problem: “Cold calculation holds sway in society’s business interactions, and has even become accepted as normal behavior” (115). The problem with the legalistic mindset is that it leaves us content to do the minimum, without striving for moral and spiritual excellence.

Cultivating the Soul

Voegelin mentioned Solzhenitsyn’s “competence as a philosopher,” and this collection shows us that his competence extends far beyond applying the ideas of Francis Bacon. Solzhenitsyn adds to the great tradition of reflection on the human soul. The West, Solzhenitsyn laments, fails to consider the soul. In his 1974 speech in Zurich, “An Orbital Journey” (which did not appear in English until 2019), he says, “Our blustering civilization has completely robbed us of a concentrated inner life, dragging our souls out into a bazaar, whether of commerce or of party politics” (32). A decade later, in the Templeton Lecture, he reminds us, “Our life is intended for the pursuit not of material success but of worthy spiritual growth” (99).

In the title speech of this collection, which most fully explores our culture’s negative impact on our souls, Solzhenitsyn adds an ironic understatement about the West’s promise of unlimited progress: “We’d forgotten to make allowance for just one trifle – the human soul” (117). He goes on, “all is a struggle for material things; but an inner voice faintly prompts us that we’ve lost something pure, elevated – and fragile. We have ceased to see the purpose” (118). Having placed our hopes in unlimited material progress, and seeing ourselves as the center of the universe, our souls grow shallow, and the consequence is that “the thought of death becomes unbearable: it is the extinguishment of the entire universe at a stroke” (120). Solzhenitsyn points us to the solution: “to share a personal observation: we can only experience true spiritual satisfaction not in seizing but in refusing to seize; in other words: in self-limitation” (126). We are looking to political or economic solutions, but that is a vain quest: “As for Progress, there can only be one true kind: the sum total of the spiritual progresses of individual persons, the degree of self-perfection in the course of their lives” (127). While I would quibble with the term “self-perfection,” believing that only the grace of God has the power to perfect us, his point –  we need to cultivate our souls, and not place our hope in political parties or economic systems – is most applicable.

Rhetorical Power: Not Lost in Translation!

In addition to showing us Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic insights and wisdom about caring for our souls, this collection helps us admire his craftsmanship. Solzhenitsyn’s three sons, Yermolai, Ignat, and Stephan, contributed translations of the seven other speeches besides the Nobel Lecture, Harvard Address, and Templeton Lecture. All ten highly engaging translations bring out Solzhenitsyn’s rhetorical skill; good rhetoric can bridge the language divide. For example, in “The Shallowing of Freedom” (from the bicentennial year of 1976), Solzhenitsyn ironically and effectively repeats the exclamation “Freedom!” in application to the worst excesses of our society. Also effective is his repetition, in the 1983 Templeton Lecture, of the saying “Men have forgotten God” as the best explanation for all of the disasters of the 20th century.

Other figures of speech that enhance the impact of Solzhenitsyn’s messages are his well-crafted antitheses. In “If One Doesn’t Wish to be Blind,” we read, “Twice we helped preserve the freedom of Western Europe – and twice you repaid us by abandoning us to our slavery” (44). In “A Reflection on the Vendeé Uprising,” delivered in 1993 in France, Solzhenitsyn captures the horror of how, in the 1920-21 Tambov uprising against communism, the peasants were “summoned by church bells in the surrounding villages – and were cut down by machine guns” (132). 

A final commendable aspect of Solzhenitsyn’s rhetoric is his audience awareness. As Ignat Solzhenitsyn notes in his introduction, his father was always aware that he had two audiences – those in the West, and those back in his homeland of Russia (xvi). His dual-audience awareness meant he would always keep in view the suffering of his fellow Russians, even when he was living as an exile in the West. He would not forget or make light of what they all had suffered for decades, and what those he left behind continued to endure. Also, his refusal to fawn over his Western hosts shows his integrity and gives him credibility.

Hope for the Future?

While Solzhenitsyn’s critiques of the West might leave us discouraged when we realize that they ring increasingly truer, he does not leave us hopeless. Many of these speeches offer a note of hope. In the Templeton Lecture, Solzhenitsyn points out that however Communism may still be ascendant, “it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity” (94). We can connect this hope back to the idea Solzhenitsyn builds his Nobel Lecture around: Dostoevsky’s own hope – in fact, a “prophecy” – that “Beauty will save the world” (6-7). Solzhenitsyn explains, “So perhaps the old trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is more than simply the decorous and antiquated formula it seemed to us during our self-assured materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees do converge, as thinkers used to claim, and yet the all-too-obvious, all-too-straight shoots of Truth and Goodness have been crushed, cut down, or not allowed to grow, then perhaps the intricate, unpredictable, and unlooked-for shoots of Beauty will force their way through and soar up to that very spot, thereby fulfilling the task of all three?” (7).

Solzhenitsyn extends that hope in his speeches from the 1990s, looking forward to the “reawakening of Russian literature” (110) at the end of “Playing Upon the Strings of Emptiness.” Again, in “We Have Ceased to See the Purpose,” we find the hope that the hard-won lessons of suffering will be passed on, for “surely we have not experienced the trials of the twentieth century in vain” (128). Clearly, the means to pass down those lessons will be through artistic beauty, for, as Solzhenitsyn says in the Nobel Lecture, “in the struggle with the lie, at least, art has always triumphed and always shall! – visibly, irrefutably for all! The lie can prevail against much in this world, but never against art” (27).

Solzhenitsyn’s speeches direct us to art, especially literature, in order to find hope. His speeches invite us to read or reread his own fiction, which shows us what his speeches have been telling us. He calls new artists to take up his work of telling the truth and defeating lies, thus fighting the “idols of the marketplace.” Overall, Solzhenitsyn challenges us to move beyond acting according to the bare minimum of legalism and the media-saturated, materialistic lifestyle that chokes out our immortal souls; he encourages us to seek the divine ground.

We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Edited by Ignat Solzhenitsyn
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2025; 228 pp

Print