Word: solzhenitsyn
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...Alexander Solzhenitsyn's forced exile to the West is a tragedy [Feb. 25]. Once again the government of the Soviet Union has succeeded in its tyranny. They gave a man his freedom and placed chains on his soul; Solzhenitsyn is above all else a Russian. To take citizenship from such a man and banish him by force from the homeland he so dearly loves is the crudest blow of all. Those spiritual beggars whose greatest fear is truth, however, should know that such a man will not be silenced so easily...
...Solzhenitsyn's arrest seems to have been inevitable to many people throughout the world, a fact that makes it no less outrageous. It is a sad day indeed for man's ever-increasing struggle for truth. I commend the news media of this country for their coverage of Solzhenitsyn. This man must not be lost to history...
...TIME'S photographs of Solzhenitsyn [Feb. 11] disclose a face like those icons of old Russian saints: full of sorrow, pity and love, but beneath that a vein of iron, a burning conviction and vast inner resources. The Soviet government will exhaust itself in trying to break his spirit...
...shame that the press tried to make Solzhenitsyn a hero. Just as it glossed over his politics, it trivialized his ordeal. It reduced patriotism and exile to clumsy propaganda. The suicide of his friend, Yelizaveta Voronyanskaya, who told the KGB where to find the author's manuscripts, became a spy movie stereotype in which the Russian Nasties smashed the Closet Capitalists. In short, by blowing Solzhenitsyn beyond proportion and then dropping him from sight, the press created a hero who cannot inspire us and obscured the human being who might otherwise have moved...
...press rarely covers this kind of hero, almost as rarely as it would cover the suffering of Solzhenitsyn if he happened to be a Vietnamese pamphleteer or a Chilean folksinger instead of an anti-communist Nobel Prize winner. Real heroes rarely get publicity or official recognition; their anonymity is part of their heroism...