Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) was a distinguished Russian author and dissident who raised global awareness of the communist oppression in the Soviet Union. Born into a devout family of the Russian Orthodox Church, Solzhenitsyn and his family resisted the Soviet anti-religion campaign, but he eventually lost his Christian faith and embraced atheistic Marxism. While serving in the Red Army, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag for calling for the overthrow of Soviet communism in his private correspondence with a fellow field officer. His traumatic prison experience led him to return to his Orthodox Christian faith. His publications earned him global notoriety but disdain from Soviet authorities. Published in 1971, his book The Gulag Archipelago outraged communist authorities. Stripped of his Soviet citizenship in 1974, he was flown to West Germany from which he moved to Switzerland; in 1976, he moved with his family to Vermont in the United States where he continued to write. In 1990 his Soviet citizenship was restored and four years later he returned to Russia where he remained until his death in 2008. While living in the West, Solzhenitsyn received various honors. Among them was a request to deliver the Harvard University commencement address on June 8, 1978. Unflinching in his moral courage, Solzhenitsyn denounced both the horrors of the communist Soviet Union and the loss of faith and morality that had laid the foundation of Western civilization. This address earned Solzhenitsyn the disdain of the intellectual elites, but he remained undeterred in his resolve. Five years later on May 10, 1983, he was honored with the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Prince Philip presided at the awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace, London. Later that same day at the London Guildhall, Solzhenitsyn delivered his well-known address, "Men Have Forgotten God". As he began his address, he observed the uniqueness of the occasion: "This is the first time that the Templeton Prize has been awarded to an Orthodox Christian." He then proceeded to recount vivid vignettes of the victims of atheistic Soviet communism. Having been an eyewitness to the horrors of communist Marxism, Solzhenitsyn attributed the moral decline of the West to the decline of Christianity.
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