Passing of a Hero: Alexander Solzenhitsyn

I was a little girl when Alexander Solzhenitsyn was in his heyday, when he made the news constantly. He was a large figure that children spoke about where I came from, Guyana, South America. We did not have television, so we read and spoke about politics. It was a pastime of many people.

In Guyana, it was not uncommon for children to be astutely politically literate. Our world, as we saw it then, in the 50's and 60's was controlled by the United States and in some way by Russia. These were the super-powers and these countries had a grip on the world and small countries such as any one of the Caribbean Islands including Guyana could be gobbled up and squashed to pieces by either of these countries if they did not play their cards correctly.

I saw the world at that time as being divided between the USA and Russia. Russia was painted as the big bad bear because it was a communist country and people's freedoms were restricted and human rights were wantonly violated. We were also appalled that people in communist countries were not allowed to go to Church and that they did not believe in God. Guyanese are God-fearing people and one of our political parties, People's Progressive Party lead by Dr. Cheddie Jagan and his American born wife Janet were self-proclaimed communists and Cheddie was trying to make Guyana a Communist State.

In the midst of all this Alexander Solzhenitsyn was seen as an important Russian intellectual and folk hero. I read some of his tales of Russia including the Cancer Ward, The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, that made him infamous in which he exposed the underbelly of the Communist regime during his 20 years of exile and it was scary when I thought that we too in Guyana could become a Communist state. He wanted the world to know what Russia was up to but he felt at the time, perhaps someone may find it after he is dead but as fate would have it, fortune smiled on the world and these works came to us even before his death.

I revered Solzhenitsyn and saw him as a voice in the wilderness, standing up to one of the greatest powers to speak the truth and for the rights of his people. He appeared tall and strong and ready to give up all he could so that he may speak like a man. I respected that. He was not afraid of the violence he saw meted out to his people. He was appalled by it. He was not one to run away to the comforts of the Western world. His desire was to remain in his country and to be with his people. His disdain for violence could be summed up in the following quote:

"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle." Alexander Solzhenitsyn quotes (Russian novelist, Nobel Prize for Literature (1970), b.1918)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn although he was totally against the cruelty of the Russian regime at the time, he was also critical of the American ruthless capitalism as well.

After his stints in prison camps Solzhenitsyn emerged with a deeper sense of right and wrong, good and evil and wrote on these themes in his subsequent books and poetries. He wrote of the pained and miserable existence of this fellow Russians before and even after the fall of the Soviet Union.

I read somewhere that Solzhenitsyn had the mark of brilliance from an early age. He loved to read and by age 10 he had already read some of the greatest classics such as Tolstoy.

Solzhenitsyn in my eyes and understanding at that young age had a prophetic embodiment. I saw him as a good person with great humility.

Then he slipped out of my radar screen for many years until now that I heard of his death and all the feelings I had for this man came gushing out and I am urged by some unknown force to read everything that is written about him.

I am pleased with the respect and honor he has justly received from the masses and the world. He has been given blessing of a hero's passing. As far as I am concerned anyone who stands up to injustice, violence and human rights without regard for his own life but for the love of his country and its peoples, is a true hero.