From a review of recent books on Solzhenitsyn come this brief account of the conservative Russian author’s encounter with condescending and blinkered American liberalism:
“leading television commentator lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my own limitedSoviet and prison-camp experience. Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonment and hunger, the cultivation of the soul despite the captivity of the body: how very limited that is compared to the bright world of political parties, yesterday’s numbers on the stock exchange, amusements without end, and exotic foreign “a leading television commentator lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my own limitedSoviet and prison-camp experience”, he writes in Between Two Millstones. “Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonment and hunger, the cultivation of the soul despite the captivity of the body: how very limited that is compared to the bright world of political parties, yesterday’s numbers on the stock exchange, amusements without end, and exotic foreign travel!”
Solzhenitsyn Between Two Millstones
