Azerbaijan International

Spring 2006 (14.1)
Page 22

One Word of Truth - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 for his personal experience narrative that exposed the Gulag camps in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". Solzhenitsyn later went on to write more books such as "Gulah Archipelago" and "Cancer World" that dealt with the camps. Those books were published in the West first. Only after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 were they published in Russia. "We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds.

Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood; falsehood, its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth, violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefication of the air around it, and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.


Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 for his personal experience narrative that exposed the Gulag camps in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". Solzhenitsyn later went on to write more books such as "Gulah Archipelago" and "Cancer World" that dealt with the camps. Those books were published in the West first. Only after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 were they published in Russia. And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let falsehood enter the world, let it even reign in the world - but not with my help. But writers and artists can achieve more: they can conquer falsehood!

In the struggle with falsehood, art has always won out, and it always will win! Openly, irrefutably for everyone! Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.

And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness. And violence, decrepit, will collapse.

That is why, my friends, I believe that we are able to help the world in its white-hot hour.

Above: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 for his personal experience narrative that exposed the Gulag camps in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". Solzhenitsyn later went on to write more books such as "Gulah Archipelago" and "Cancer World" that dealt with the camps. Those books were published in the West first. Only after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 were they published in Russia.

Not by making the excuse of possessing no weapons, and not by giving ourselves over to a frivolous life - but by going to war! Proverbs about truth are dearly loved in Russian. They provide a steady and, often, striking revelation of the harsh national experience: "One word of truth outweighs the whole world."

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, for his novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1962). Solzhenitsyn went on to publish three volumes of "The Gulag Archipelago" (1970) about his own experiences and stories of 277 prisoners that he heard in prison.


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