One Word of Truth

A Portrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

By David Aikman
Foreword by Os Guinness and Richard Ohman
(1997)

In 1989, David Aikman, then a journalist with Time magazine, was granted the first major interview Solzhenitsyn had given an American news organization for years.

Trinity Forum Senior Fellow David Aikman’s engaging and lively account portrays an amazing man who has devoted his life to the battle for truth. The story of this “apostle of truth” is starkly contrasted with our current culture, for today we are experiencing a severe crisis of truth on many levels. In academia, what once was “self-evident” is now “relative” or “socially constructed.” But truth has died not only at the hands of scholars, but at the hands of politicians, advertisers, and preachers. We are all well-schooled in the art of bending, shaping, and “finessing” the truth.

As our own culture of lies worsens, we would do well to tackle the thorny issues surrounding a tough view of truth by grappling with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the twentieth century’s apostle of truth. He may seem to be too “passé” a celebrity to mesmerize us anymore, but his witness to us in the West is actually more telling than ever.

Solzhenitsyn’s love for the truth was strengthened in the Gulag—the Soviet labor camps in which he served an eight-year sentence. There he developed the ability and passion to strip away the rhetoric and pursue the truth, though at an exceedingly high cost.

We in the West do not presently face the Gulag or an empire of lies, but the truth is no less vital for living a free life. All those who would lead our society effectively would do well to engage with the life and witness of one who based his life on the truth.

I wondered aloud to Solzhenitsyn if he believed in the notion of calling, the idea common in the Jewish and Christian faiths that God summons people to accomplish—or at least to perform—certain things in their lives. His reply was swift. “Everybody has a purpose and the main purpose of each of us is how to understand it,” he replied. “Given the everyday preoccupations of ordinary life, people don’t spend enough time thinking about this. They have their daily troubles. Only self-deepening, reflection, prayer, only reflection can discover that purpose.” Did Solzhenitsyn believe he had completed his own life’s task? I asked. “At the end of my life, I will have fulfilled my debt,” he said. One Word of Truth

This selection is available for purchase as an MP3 audio download from Mars Hill Audio.

This Reading is adapted from the Solzhenitsyn chapter of Aikman’s book, Great Souls: Six who Changed the Century.

Category: Readings (No. 17)