Solzhenitsyn Flays the West

The Russian Nobel laureate's biting 1978 Harvard Commencement speech

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In 1974, the Soviet Union deported dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Litt.D. ’78, author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,  and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature. After living in Cologne, Germany; Zurich, Switzerland; and at Stanford University, he settled in Cavendish, Vermont, in 1976. Two years later, Harvard awarded the 59-year-old Solzhenitsyn an honorary doctor of letters degree and chose him as its Commencement speaker. His address on June 8, 1978, was Solzhenitsyn's  first public statement since his arrival in the United States. Given the suffering he had endured in the Soviet Union, many in the audience expected that the writer's address would be a stern rebuke to Communist totalitarianism, combined with a paean to Western liberty and democracy. The Tercentenary Theatre audience was in for a rude surprise. "The Exhausted West," delivered in Russian with English translation under overcast skies, chastised the arrogance and smugness of Western materialist culture and exposed the adverse effects of some of those achievements that Western democracies had long prided themselves upon. "The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals," the author declared, for example. "It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations." Solzhenitsyn's brilliant, iconoclastic speech ranks among the most thoughtful, articulate, and challenging  addresses ever delivered at a Harvard Commencement. 

Read more in this PDF from the July-August 1978 issue.

You might also like

Five Questions with Professor Peter Der Manuelian

Harvard professor of Egyptology on unsolved mysteries, cats, and the beauty of ancient craftsmanship.

“A Game of Inches”

Harvard women’s basketball prepares for its rematch with Columbia. 

Nieman Foundation Leader Departs

Ann Marie Lipinski led the organization through a time of unprecedented change for journalism.

Most popular

The Unruly Academy

President emeritus Neil L. Rudenstine on changes in the academy and society that made universities more contentious—and diminished support for humane learning

Safe Streets

Working to curb road deaths

Teen Grind Culture

Teens need better strategies to cope with lives lived partly online.

Explore More From Current Issue

Is Gambling Becoming a Public Health Crisis?

Responding to the explosive growth of online gambling and sports betting, a new report urges governments to regulate with public health in mind.

The New Boston Athenaeum

Find “the joy of discovery and power of this unique place.”

A Contentious Era for U.S. Higher Education

President emeritus Neil L. Rudenstine on changes in the academy and society that made universities more contentious—and diminished support for humane learning