Nobel archives reveal judges’ safety fears for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A cold war mentality is still pervading many Western sources, here even when the article itself does not have any inkling that physical safety of Solzhenitsyn was ever a cause for concern, the headline makes it so feeding a certain perception. The Soviet Union of the 1970s was not the Soviet Union of the 30s.<p>Solzhenitsyn was also a fierce critic of the West, and many who thought who would find him a pro-western voice was gravely surprised in his further commentary after coming to the west.<p>From his commencement address Harvard&#x2F;78:<p>&quot;Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to flock together and shut off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of a petrified armor around people&#x27;s minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.&quot;