The Oak and the Calf
By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald
(1992)
Excerpts from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1975 autobiographical book provide lessons not only on the tragedy of oppression but on the human spirit and matters of the soul. His writing inspires us to reflect on our own unique missions in this world.
Looking back, even a fool would be able to predict it today: the Soviet regime could certainly have been breached only by literature. The regime has been reinforced with concrete to such an extent that neither a military coup nor a political organization nor a picket line of strikers can knock it over or run it through. Only the solitary writer would be able to do this. And the Russian younger generation would move on into the breach.
Obvious? Yet no one foresaw it, either in the thirties or in the fifties. That’s the trouble with the future: it slips away and eludes us. The Oak and the Calf
Category: Readings (No. 3)
