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: Grits for Breakfast

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, R.I.P.

The greatest and most effective prison reform advocate on the planet died yesterday at the ripe old age of 89. Russian novelist Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was perhaps best known for his literally and literarily awesome nonfiction tome, "The Gulag Archipelago," described in an early obituary as: a monumental account of the Soviet labor camp system, a chain of prisons that by Solzhenitsyn's calculation some 60 million people had entered during the 20th century. The book led to his expulsion from his native land.In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize (he could not attend the award ceremony for fear the Soviets would not allow him to leave), Solzhenitsyn recalled his own prison experience:in the midst of exhausting prison camp relocations, marching in a column of prisoners in the gloom of bitterly cold evenings, with strings of camp lights glimmering through the darkness, we would often feel rising in our breast what we would have wanted to shout out to the whole world — if only the whole world could have heard us...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on August 04, 2008 (boomark / email).