[slibhb]

I'm a fan of Solzhenitsyn as a writer. The First Circle justly won him the Nobel. But this speech has not aged well.

> For one thousand years Russia belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its special character and therefore never understood it

The idea that Russia is a separate civilization with a great destiny is a cause of Russia's imperialism in Eastern Europe. That was true under the tsars, in the USSR, and it's true today.

Moreover, Solzhenitsyn's harping on the spiritual decay of the West brings to mind a modern post-liberal blogger. Solzhenitsyn was a contrarian, and this led to significant heroism, but it also prevented him from recognizing liberalism as a goal for Russia. And today, Putin's weird mix of far right larping, belief in Russia's special destiny, and throwback chauvinism could plausibly claim late-Solzhenitsyn as its progenitor.