He was a great defender of freedom and liberty, and spoke out courageously against totalitarianism. He has died, at the age of 89.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn never knew it, but he was a part of my political education. I can still remember, in my sophomore year of high school, reading his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The book was so simple--it told of one day in the life of a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp. Yet it was so stark, and told so well of the evils of Stalinism. It led me to read other books on the subject, as I'm Solzhenitsyn led millions of others to do with all of his books. RIP, o eloquent one.
