Texto escrito justo antes de que Solzhenitsyn fuera expulsado de la Unión Soviética en 1974

Vivir sin la mentira

por Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Texto escrito justo antes de que Solzhenitsyn fuera expulsado de la Unión Soviética en 1974 y fue publicado originalmente en el Wasington Post
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No hemos madurado lo suficiente como para dirigirnos a las plazas a gritar la verdad o a expresar en voz alta lo que pensamos. No es necesario.

Es peligroso, pero déjennos negarnos a decir lo que no pensamos. Este es nuestro camino, el más fácil y accesible, el que tiene en cuenta nuestra arraigada, inherente cobardía. Y es mucho más fácil –incluso es peligroso decir esto– que el tipo de desobediencia por la que abogó Gandhi.

Nuestro camino es hablar fuera de ese corrompido límite. Si no uniésemos los huesos muertos y los peldaños de la ideología, si no cosiéramos los trapos podridos, nos asombraríamos por lo rápido que la mentira quedaría desamparada y desaparecería.

Lo que estuviera desnudo aparecería entonces desnudo ante el mundo entero. De modo que cada uno, en su intimidad, debe realizar una elección: o seguir siendo siervo de la mentira voluntariamente –por supuesto, no queda fuera la inclinación a mentir, pero otra cosa es alimentar a la familia, educando a los hijos en el espíritu de la mentira–, o despreciar la mentira y volverse un hombre honesto y digno de respeto tanto para los hijos como para los contemporáneos.

A partir de ese momento:

- No escribirá, firmará o imprimirá por ningún medio una sola frase que, en su opinión, deforme la verdad.

- No dirá esa misma frase ni en público ni en privado, ni por sí mismo ni por instigación de otro, ni como agitador, profesor, educador, ni siquiera como actor.

- No representará, adoptará o difundirá una sola idea que considere falsa, o que distorsione la verdad, ya sea a través de la pintura, la escultura, la fotografía, la técnica o la música.

- No citará fuera de contexto, ni oralmente ni por escrito, sólo por complacer a alguien, o para enriquecerse, o por lograr éxito en su trabajo, una idea que no comparta o que no refleje con precisión el asunto en cuestión.

- No se obligará a asistir a manifestaciones o a reuniones contra su voluntad, y tampoco levantará ningún cartel o eslogan que no acepte completamente.

-No levantará la mano para votar a favor de una propuesta con la que no simpatice sinceramente, ni votará públicamente o en secreto a quien considere indigno o dude de sus capacidades.

- No se obligará a asistir a una reunión en la que quepa esperar una discusión forzada o distorsionada de una cuestión.

- Abandonará inmediatamente cualquier reunión, sesión, conferencia, representación o película en la que el orador mienta, distribuya estupideces ideológicas o propaganda desvergonzada.

- No se suscribirá ni comprará ningún periódico o revista en los que la información sea deformada o donde los hechos principales sean ocultados.

No hemos enumerado, desde luego, todas las desviaciones posibles y necesarias de la falsedad, pero una persona que se vaya purificando fácilmente sabrá distinguir otros supuestos.

No, al principio no será igual para todos. Algunos, al principio, perderán sus empleos. Los jóvenes que quieran vivir en la verdad tendrán, al principio, muchas complicaciones, porque se exigen declaraciones llenas de mentiras, y es necesario elegir.

Pero no hay ninguna escapatoria para alguien que quiera ser honesto.

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Leer más aquí: prodavinci.com

The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model. There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen.

Text of Address by
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises,

Thursday, June 8, 1978

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today's graduates.

Harvard's motto is "Veritas." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things which at that time appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said...
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Before the Turn

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward


Read more here: www.columbia.edu

In Solzhenitsyn’s Russia, after much bloodshed and suffering, men have begun to remember God.

Solzhenitsyn and the Russian Renaissance

Andrew Doran

This is the beginning of 'St Matthew Passion' (Страсти по Матфею, Matthäuspassion) 

by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev. Conductor: Vladimir Fedosseyev. 

Performed in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatoire 

In the early spring of 1953, a sickly Russian novelist, “covered with ice, out of the dark and the cold,” staggered forth from the Soviet Gulag, the constellation of Communist prison camps that stretched from Siberia to South Asia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ill with cancer, had once been a proponent of the system that condemned him to forced labor. Now he saw his nation’s “deep suffering,” like his own, as redemptive.

Hilarion Alfeyev: St Matthew Passion. Fuga No 47 and Finale

“The entire twentieth century,” Solzhenitsyn observed in his 1983 Templeton Lecture, was “sucked into the vortex of atheism and self-destruction.” Why? “Men have forgotten God,” he said. At the outset of the twentieth century, the faith of the Russian people could be witnessed even in the trenches of the Great War, where the Germans would gun down thousands of Russians by day only to listen in wonder at their seraphic, if melancholic, chant by night.

But when war and famine proved too much to bear, the Russian people rebelled. Decades earlier, Dostoevsky had prophetically warned that “great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared.” Those events came swiftly in Russia. The Bolsheviks, the most organized and ruthless of the factions that vied to replace the old regime, emerged victorious. Solzhenitsyn wrote of Marx and Lenin, “Hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.” Nowhere was this more evident than in the Bolsheviks’ systematic campaign of atheistic violence—unprecedented in human history.

Страсти по Матфею / St. Matthew Passion (Hilarion Alfeyev)

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Read more: www.firstthings.com

La herencia literaria de Alexandr Solzhenitsyn es una “cámara oculta” que nos abre una ventana sobre el mundo inédito de la revolución radical

Solzhenitsyn - Pensamiento, vida y obra

Uno de los gigantes del siglo pasado en la eterna lucha por un mundo de hombres libres. Uno de los raros hombres que pudo hacer de buena fe un giro intelectual de 360 ° y quedar apuntando otra vez hacia el norte. Un hombre que mostró en la práctica la importancia, el poder y el efecto de la lucha de ideas bien llevada. Un maestro en el arte de superar obstáculos aparentemente infranqueables. Una especie de guía de alta montaña, de cadenas de cimas aún inexploradas hasta que él mismo las recorrió palmo a palmo -voluntaria e involuntariamente- para mostrarnos un camino posible hacia nuevos y diferentes horizontes, hacia tierras ignotas, a una humanidad cansada de repetir experiencias y de vagar sin éxito por caminos de un supuesto crecimiento indefinido y de interminables desarrollos científicos, económicos y tecnológicos, harta de explorar la glorificación de la materia y el cuerpo, hedonista, dedicada masivamente a consumir individualmente luego lo que ha instituido como consumo obligatorio, como lo hace con los deportes de masas, luego de haber implantado la masificación del deporte, y como se distrae realizando turismo de masas luego de haber instalado la masificación del turismo en el mundo. 

¿A quién no le hubiera gustado disponer de una “cámara oculta” para poder acceder desde adentro a los cambios producidos por la revolución rusa? ¿A quién no le hubiera gustado pasar horas y horas escuchando los relatos sobre el reemplazo de una cultura y de un sistema político como el zarista a uno radicalmente diferente como el soviético?

Contenido

• Índice 
• Introducción 
• Seis vidas en una 
• Infancia y juventud 1918-1940 
• La guerra 1940-1945 
• La cárcel y el exilio interior 1945-1956 
• Escritor y ciudadano 1956-1974 
• Un exilio creativo y combativo 1974-1994 
• De vuelta en Rusia 1994-2008 
• Epílogo

La herencia intelectual de Solzhenitsyn es de una magnitud aún no sopesada por la intelectualidad occidental. Los millones de libros vendidos, son como semillas al viento que esperan aún caer en tierra fértil para germinar y producir frutos en abundancia.

Educado en el amor por su patria, la convulsionada época que le toca vivir y los acontecimientos por los que tiene que atravesar (a pesar suyo) lo precipitan a un protagonismo histórico que va forjando su vocación de pensador, de escritor y de intelectual-político; un verdadero “think tank” ambulante… 

La profundidad de los dramas de su país, la revolución, la guerra, la pérdida de la libertad, la convivencia forzosa con lo mejor y lo peor del ser humano, su pesimismo realista respecto del hombre del siglo XX y finalmente el cáncer, son hechos que le van demostrando la imposibilidad de encontrar soluciones de fondo que no incluyan la trascendencia de la persona, la conciencia de la providencia de Dios respecto de cada ser creado, y el “acompañamiento” personal del Creador a cada hombre durante su vida.

Todo este camino se resume en seis estrofas de una poesía suya escrita en el momento de su conversión:

¿Cuándo esparcí la buena simiente al viento 
como si fuera paja 
y rechacé aquellos templos 
en que fui acunado por Tus jubilosos himnos? 

Mi deslumbrante sabiduría cosechada en los libros resultó más de lo que este arrogante cerebro podía soportar. 

El mundo se extendía ante mí con sus secretos 
y el destino era simple cera en mis manos. 

Cada nueva oleada de sangre batiendo en mi interior me tentaba con su deslumbrante clamor 
mientras la fe de mi corazón se derrumbaba en silencio 
como un edificio abandonado, destinado a la ruina. 

Pero eligiendo mi camino entre la vida y la extinción ahora cayendo, ahora levantándome, 
contemplo con nuevos ojos la vida que una vez seguí 
y contemplándola, me estremezco de agradecimiento. 

No fue mi intelecto, ni mi deseo, lo que determinó cada vuelta del camino 
Sino la firme y constante luz de un designio Superior 
que solo con el tiempo pude captar. 

Y ahora, mientras bebo con nueva moderación de las vivificadoras aguas, veo 
que mi fe ha sido restaurada, ¡Oh Señor de la Creación! 

Renuncié a ti, pero tú permaneciste a mi lado.

Bajar aquí biografia completa en .pdf www.institutoacton.com.ar

Solzhenitsyn, a giant of Russian and world literature, was the indomitable chronicler of a century full of genocidal exterminations, impregnated with exacerbated cruelty and infamy

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Paradigmatic Zek

By Vladimir Tismaneanu

Five years have passed since the demise, on August 3, 2008, of the great novelist, dissident, and thinker Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Forty-five years ago, on August 25, 1968, seven people demonstrated in the Red Square heroically against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, thus ushering in an era of open dissent and ruthless persecutions, including forcible internments into psychiatric institutions. More than twenty years ago, in December 1991, the ideocratic empire called the USSR collapsed. As historian Boris Souvarine, who wrote an unsurpassed Stalin biography, noticed mordantly:

“USSR, four letters, four lies. It was neither a free union, nor Soviet, in the sense of councils’ democracy. Neither was it socialist, if socialism involves social equality, nor a set of republics, in the etymological sense of the term, res publica, an object of civic commitment.”

The Solzhenitsyn effect, associated with the publication in the West of his non-fiction monument titled “The Gulag Archipelago,” a most devastating indictment of Sovietism, engendered a mutation in the global perception of communism and contributed to the inexorable de-legitimization of totalitarianism. The Soviet myth was dealt a mortal blow. Communist “humanism” turned out to be similar to the Nazi one. The Bolshevik “conscience” was not different from the Fascist one.

No one has demonstrated more persuasively than Solzhenitsyn the duplicitous, schizophrenic nature of communism, its absolute moral falsity. His urge for individuals to live within the truth, echoed by Jan Patocka and Vaclav Havel, founders of Charter 77, was accompanied by his endeavor to expose the terrorist underpinnings of Bolshevism, whatever its incarnations (Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Castro-Guevarism, etc). For Solzhenitsyn, the roots of Bolshevik anti-humanism were linked to its proud embrace of a programmatic, militant atheism. It was, as French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy put it, “barbarism with a human face.” Far from being an extenuating circumstance, the humanist pretense was in fact an aggravating one.

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Read more here: frontpagemag.com

Giving two minutes to the bubonic plague in an hourlong documentary about the deadliest medieval epidemics: with such consistent media messaging, is it any wonder that most people are still confused about the real causes of the crisis?

Five years of financial denial

By Jay W. Richards

Washington’s role in the housing crisis still hasn’t hit home

We’re nearing the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis boil-over, but Washington is still in denial about its role in the meltdown. The numbers, which weren’t well known in 2008, now tell the real story.
As a result of Washington’s arduous efforts to expand homeownership for lower-income Americans, by 2008 almost half the loans in the market — some 27 million — were risky, subprime or otherwise nontraditional. Two-thirds of these risky loans were held by entities controlled by or within the federal government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held almost half — 12 million. So it’s no surprise that these “government-sponsored” behemoths that buy home loans from loan originators had to be nationalized in September 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

The Federal Housing Administration and other federal agencies, such as the Veterans Administration and Federal Home Loan Banks, held 5 million, and Community Reinvestment Act and Department of Housing and Urban Development programs had another 2.2 million. That’s a whopping total of 19.2 million risky loans held by government or government-controlled actors, leaving 7.8 million for Countrywide Financial, Wall Street and so forth.

Superficially, it might appear that things have changed. If you’ve tried to buy a house in the past few years, for instance, you know that it’s now harder to get a large loan than it was before the crisis. And President Obama recently proposed that the federal government begin to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Both of these facts look like evidence that the federal government has disentangled itself from housing. However, the visible hand of government is still manipulating the market. Indeed, Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration now backstop 87 percent of all home loans, up from about 40 percent before the crisis.
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Read more: www.washingtontimes.com

In defining Catholic Weltanschauung, Guardini follows a method that became a trademark of his work.

Romano Guardini: 

The Essence of a Catholic Worldview

by David Foote

“To believe means to go to Christ from that place where one stands. It means to see with his eyes; to measure by his norm. The believer stands beyond the world through him, simply by believing.” 

Summer is at an end. For those of us in the world of education, the new academic year is upon us. As the urgency and pace of preparation builds, it is worthwhile to pause, take a step back, and reflect.

When the year is over, what will we have accomplished? 

This question is especially important for those of us in the world of Catholic education, which offers, or at least ought to offer, something qualitatively distinct. 

With these thoughts in mind, I turn to Msgr. Romano Guardini (1885-1968), one of the towering figures of Catholic intellectual life in the mid-twentieth century. 

In the spring of 1923, Guardini began his duties as chair of Catholic Weltanschauung (Worldview) with his inaugural lecture, “The Essence of a Catholic Weltanschauung.” 

In it, he offered a richly textured account of what it means to bring a Catholic worldview to bear upon the world of education and, indeed, life in general.

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Read more here: www.crisismagazine.com

Selected bibliography

• Gottes Werkleute. Briefe ueber Selbstbildung, 1921
• Der Gegensatz, 1925
• Grundlegung der Bildungslehre, 1928
• Das Gute, das Gewissen und die Sammlung, 1929
• Christliches Bewusstsein, 1935
• Das Wesen des Christentums, 1937
• Welt und Person, 1939
• Der Tod des Sokrates, 1943
• Die Lebensalter, 1944
• Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal, 1948
• Das Ende der Neuzeit, 1950
• Sorge um den Menschen, 1962
• Begegnung und Bildung, (together with O. F. Bollnow), 1956

Major works available in English

• The End of the Modern World. Sheed & Ward, 1957. More recently in a revised edition by ISI Books, 1998. ISBN 978-1-882926-23-7
• The Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer. Sophia Institute Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-918477-21-7
• The Lord. Regnery Publishing, 1996. ISBN 978-0-89526-714-6
• The Essential Guardini: An Anthology, edited by Heinz R. Kuehn. Liturgy Training Publications, 1997. ISBN 978-1-56854-133-4
• The Spirit of the Liturgy. Crossroad Publishing, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8245-1777-9
• Living the Drama of Faith. Sophia Institute Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-918477-77-4
• Learning the Virtues. Sophia Institute Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-918477-64-4
• The Death of Socrates. Kessinger Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4325-5430-9
• The Rosary of Our Lady. Sophia Institute Press, 1998.