One of the last Cold Warriors is gone. Alexander Solzhenitsyn died recently at age 89.

The curmudgeonly Russian played a vital role in bringing down the Soviet Union. He wasn't a politician or statesman. He was a writer. Solzhenitsyn's  "Gulag Archipelago" trilogy, published in the '70s, dramatized the horrors of the Soviet system of prison camps, which he had experienced first hand. In the aftermath of World War II,  Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years for criticizing Stalin. His works detailing the "human meat grinder" of the USSR exposed Westerners' to the viciousness of the regime as no other writings before. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.

By exposing the monstrous Soviet system, Solzhenitsyn helped to mobilize resistance to it. In his book, Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War, Joseph Shattan explores the lives of individuals who helped contribute to the demise of Soviet Communism: Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Konrad Adenauer, Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Five heads of state and one writer. Solzhenitsyn's example may not prove the pen is mightier than the sword, but it does show that the printed word has its own unique power.

While he helped bring down one of the twentieth-century's most illiberal regimes, Solzhenitsyn himself was no classic liberal. He was an ardent Russian nationalist who whitewashed the crimes of the tsars. He was at best ambivalent towards Western-style democracy, which he viewed as too individualistic, and doubted if it was right for Russia. Nor was Solzhenitsyn a fan of capitalism, showing particular disdain for globalism. Granted, he didn't care too much the alternatives either, telling biographer Joseph Pierce socialism "was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion." In general, he saw the answer to everything in general to religion, specifically his own Russian Orthodox faith. This led him flirt at times with anti-Semitism, and it is apparent he didn't really consider Jews "real" Russians.

While lovers of liberty would find much to quarrel with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, it is impossible to ignore the part he played in helping to free millions from Communist tyranny. For that alone, he deserves our gratitude.

-GIR-