78-09-B5
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Alex. Solzhenitsyn II[edit]
Transcript[edit]On the last broadcast I quoted from the June Harvard graduation address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It was a very frank description of how our society appears to this man who lived through the horror of the Soviet Gulag and still had the courage to defy the slave masters of his homeland. I've quoted him because he does not see in us the same courage. Speaking of the Vietnam conflict he said: "The American intelligentsia lost its nerve and as a consequence thereof, danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your short sighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America carefree breathing pause; however, a hundred fold Vietnam now looms over you." He continued, "That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But, if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a Communist half country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?" If the West doesn't have the will to stand firm, Solzhenitsyn says, nothing is left then but concessions and betrayal to gain time. He criticized our diplomats at the Belgrade Conference who backed away from any confrontation over Soviet violations of the Human Rights provision in the Helsinki pact. This is the provision for which men like Orlov have gone to Siberia and others have died. It reminds us of the arrogant statement by the chief Soviet delegate at Belgrade who said, "If you take out everything we don't like, it's quite a good document." Then he said that while the next world war would probably not be an atomic one, still it might very well bury Western Civilization forever. He said he wasn't "examining the case of a world war disaster and the changes it would produce in society. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. "I am referring," he said, "to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness. We have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our responsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life." Solzhenitsyn told the Harvard graduating class that since our bodies are all doomed to die, our task while on earth must be of a more spiritual nature. He left them with this charge, "that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, in that one may leave life a better human being than one started with." Isn't it too bad that young men and women graduating from the University of Moscow can't have a speaker like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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