[mactavish88]

Sounds to me a lot like Nietzsche’s prediction of the impact of the “death of God”.

Solzhenitsyn primarily focuses in this speech, it seems to me, on there being a growing lack of subordination to a higher spiritual purpose in the West, similar to that in the East, both having predictable consequences in terms of the collapse and eventual destruction of those societies. (Materialism and “anthropocentricity” take over and life loses its meaning.)

The superficial shape of the collapse in the East (under Communism) is different to that of the West, but according to him both suffer from the same underlying disease.

[ttyprintk]

Except that spiritualism in the East is generational suffering. Imagine the Great Depression as a contagious and national feature.

When the Berlin Wall (accidentally) fell, I think it showed the West as far more durably attractive than the East was robust due to generational suffering.

So the question becomes China. Its dissidents do sound like Solzhenitsyn: the Chinese state successfully banned certain truths. But they have spirituality distinct from national suffering. And in 1978, you wouldn’t have seen the beginnings of materialism as well.