Sir, - Seamus Martin, writing about Solzhenitsyn (June 23rd), follows Fintan O'Toole as the second Irish Times writer to reveal a lack of appreciation and understanding of this towering intellect of the twentieth century. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn may rightly be described as Russia's greatest novelist since Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
Dostoyevsky, in his Pushkin speech shortly before his death, warned the Russian people that their true destiny and surest path to peace, freedom and justice for all was to return to the great religious spirit invested in the soul of the Russian people, and contained and expressed in Orthodox Christianity. He was called reactionary and dismissed by left-wing Russian intellectuals. Less than 40 years after his death, Lenin came to power, and later Stalin. These two dictators caused enormous misery and, between them, did away with 40 million people.
Dostoyevsky was right and his critics were proven to be absolutely wrong. In our own time, Solzhenitsyn, who deserves the mantle of Dostoyevsky, and having suffered like him in brutal Siberian prison camps, warns the Russian people against false ideologies. Solzhenitsyn is telling Russia that liberty and justice will not be found in Western materialistic capitalism, but only by returning to traditional Christian principles. It is a message that needs to be heard in Ireland today as well.
My bet is that Solzhenitsyn, like Dostoyevsky before him, will be proven to be right and Seamus Martin completely wrong. - Yours, etc., Cllr Richard Greene
Roebuck Road, Dublin 14.