Here is the original broadcast video, with English translation, and the complete text to follow along. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a prophetic voice, and nowhere is that more evident than in this rightly famous address. Fr Seraphim Rose focused on many of Solzhenitsyn's observations, of course from an Orthodox Christian viewpoint, therefore they may be considered together.
I assure you, you will be stunned at what he says about the loss of courage in the West, about the Press, about every aspect of his analysis.
If you have the means to watch this on a large screen TV (through an AppleTV or other set-top box with YouTube), I would urge you to make it an event for your family and friends, or for your parish. Pop some popcorn, hand out notepads, even pause every so often to discuss some radical point or another. This is not a past event for us to venerate, but a call to prayer, to repentance, to action, and to witness (
martyria).
A World Split Apart
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Commencement Address
Thirty-five years ago today – on June 8, 1978 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who had arrived in the United States three years earlier, delivered the commencement address at Harvard University. The “Harvard Address,” as it has popularly come to be known, is most likely Solzhenitsyn’s most famous work of non-fiction. Famous, that is, but little read. On its thirty-fifth anniversary, we offer this prophetic work for our readers’ reconsideration.
I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today’s graduates.
Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.
Three years ago in the United States I said certain things which at that time appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said…
The split in today’s world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom – in this case, our Earth – divided against itself cannot stand.
